DIL CHAHTA HAIN meets Nagesh Kukunoor...meets BLACK

such an eclectic amalgamation is what " 5 point some one "written by chetan bhagat is all about ..I simply loved reading that book ...brought me memories of my college days... (minus neha though :-( )

Even though I have picked up the book a year late .... such works are timeless one's ...as i love stories that cater to the "guy-next door " feeling and talk about the subtleness of feelings . That book has kept me occupied for the last 2 days and I am all set to devour anoter one ..but on B school lines ..its called MBA (Mediocre but arrogant !!) ..by abhijit bhaduri ... tonight

I had attended the blogger meet last sunday and it was a sense of deja vu ..meeting new persons and with the fact that one had id cards printed .it was easier to din into the minds of the bloggers my url .... and also met quite a few old friends ... Amethyst seems to have a lovely setting and kudos to Kiruba for having selected that place .. I guess blogger meets have now come a long way ....from the first official blogger meet that was held in 2002 and I was a part of the 6 people who met ...read more about that here.

POTHOLED EXISTENCE

Biking on the IT highway can be the most painful thing especially when waterlogged roads lead to huge potholes which when stepped on ..can have a telling effect on the spinal cord..as the bike's shock absorbers tend to eschew the shock and is generous enough to pass on the load to the rider.

I guess Chennai too is slowly turning into a mini bangalore ....unless and untill the goverment ramps up the 6 lane highway on OMR , such wet weather coupled with bad roads and no streetlights can only spell disaster for biker's.

Back home things arent too pleasant with my area madipakkam getting flooded upto knee level for the third time in 3 weeks ....but atleast for now ..i dont see myself abandoning my home and taking refuge elsewhere ....as the rains more so seem to have subsided with the sun coming out today...

Its not about the bike !


Well seems a single thread connects lance armstrong, the ace champion cyclist and ur's truly...as they pervaded through tough road conditions and became champions.Lance did it on the pyrenees and alps and most of france ,while i get to show my bravery on Old mahabalipuram road and the road linking to madipakkam,via the thuraipakkam-pallikaranai bypass road.Last evening after waiting for a long time..In office due to the rains...when the downpour mildly lessened , I decided to start from office.My bike suprisingly didnt misbehave even after being drenched in water for most part of the day. My bike started smoothly like a dream ...and soon enough minutes after I hit the Old mahabs Highway (so called IT corridor ) my dream became a nightmare..When strong winds and heavy rain had inundated the road in minutes.My bike though..was resistant to all that was happening around it braving the fact that some (4n + 2 ) wheelers in the hope to get home soon splashed water all around me and my bike.Now that is one thing that i hate ....when vehicles tend to accelerate when the roads are flooded , thereby splashing water on the other vehicles...near it. Anyway..it was ineveitable given the sense of urgency to return home for each of the people driving vehicles in such heavy rain.My bike as soon as it turned left from thuraipakkam towards pallikaranai ... entered what one would call a labyrinthine water trough.... where on a normal sunny chennai day the highway road is flanked by huge open spaces of the pallikaranai marsh....but due to the rains over the past week or so , the marsh had turned into an ocean ..and adding misery to my biking experience was the fact that all the roadlights went kaput and i had to pervade through darkness on a lonely highway road ..on which beyond a particular distance even the roads were flooded thanks to the flood waters receding the embankment level of the marsh. At this point my bike sensed danger and did a ctrl-alt-del and stopped right in the middle of the puddle of water..I tried starting it in vain ... only then did i condescend to get off my bike and see reality surrounding me after i wiped my glasses .the water level in that half hour of rains ...at 7 pm had flooded the troads to such an extent that i felt i was waiting to practice scuba diving in the middle of an artificial ocean.I could not distinguish between the road and the huge marsh that lay adjunct to the road..and given the fact that the marsh flanking the road was easily 50 metres deep as the road was on a higher level ....fears of me drowning soon engulfed my head ... I waited for a while for the rain to stop ...but it didnt ...

I had no option but to push my bike “”upstream”” agains the current of water on the road ,even as leviathan lorries and buses raced ahead with impunity splashing waves of water over me and I was left simpering like a fool , laughing at my own misery. I knew that it was a long walk back home ….6-7 kilometres to be precise …. But to walk along with a bag slung over my shoulder and to push a bike was a tough ask .

The road seemed to extend until eternity when I finally decided enough was enough..as my arms were aching from pushing the bike along …and thank goodness the rains had just about stopped …so I gave my rugged old bike a couple of more kicks to start the bike …it didn’t …. A few more it didn’t ….. Exasperated …I took a deep breath and with my might kicked it ..and finally my engine awoke ….making a brief noise and disappearing into the dins of the frogs croaking and the vehicles honking from behind. This was enough to kick start hope into my heart and I repeated the same with more patience … as I kicked harder , the engine started to slowly make some noise and it started releasing huge puffs of smoke …along with pumping a few litres of the gutter-rain mixture out of my bike ….and yo my bike seemed to start…. But ….the power in it seemed so dim that incase I switched off or lowered my speed/gear the bike wouldn’t start again … Taking note of the constraint my bike imposed on me.. I did a “”keanu reeves speed” making a steely resolve that I would not lower the speed below 40 ….and flexed my accelerator to full throttle on the roads ..turned into a (Himalayan moto cross track) to blaze my way through ….a relatively empty road.

My bike seemed all ok , when I turned on the pallikaranai highway road leading to velachery …but just remembered that this damn place has medians all around the road as the road has its own curves and potholes ..so biking on the wrong side of 40 was like committing hara-kiri and I slowed down to avoid …. Hitting the median..when I landed in a huge pothole …and drat the bike went kaput this time around… after a few unsuccessful attempts to revive life in my bike … the proverbial final kick …..Started the bike ….and it was like driving on free space ….with me not knowing where exactly the road was …as to expect street lights in this area was akin to expecting Neanderthal man to shoot an email to fix a bug and to make matters worse a fresh spell of heavy rains started again

Soon relief came when a IT company bus with huge lights honked me from behind ….and I did not dare budge from my position ahead of him …as the light from the bus seemed just about ok to confirm that I was on a road and not straying on any mud laden heap of sand …deposited on mist highway roads.

Finally a hour and a half after I started … and after facing a lot of verball volleys from the bus that followed me ,in the hope that I would give way …I landed home …. Bruised ,wet and of course with a sense of achievement that I had won the battle ….. (with the rains just about being reduced to a drizzle ).I was expecting a champions welcome ..when we mother chided me for using the bike in such wet weather…. Grumbling I went inside and after I settled down ….and sat near the window ….proudly gazing at the road my bike had braved through…..amidst such trying circumstances ….a fresh spell of rains again pounded …my place so as to tell me “ u just lived to fight another day “…while I said to myself “I might have won the battle ….but the war is still on …. With heavy rains expected for the next few days “….

Anyways its just that Lance Armstrong makes headlines on the Tour ‘de’france ….I thought why not claim my share of fame on the Tour’de ‘OMR”…. So that’s why this “epoch breaking story “ .Bouquets or brickbats welcome …..

PS: I HAVE COME IN MY BIKE AGAIN TODAY !!!

Holiday !

I am waiting to go one one ....am really bored sitting up at home ,or coding in office....as life seems to have become mundane ... I desperatley need to sit down and ask myself..what i intend to do with the rest of my life.Life kinda seems boring .. I see that i have stopped some of my hobbies and interests in pursuit of other " feline material comforts" ,though in vain ... just need to do a recheck on life and get back to enjoying life as i did while in college.

Heard that Kiruba is organizing the "n"th blogger meet ...and I shall be attending one after quite a while considering my last one was some time last year at the beach.

KhushBOOED....

My take on the khushboo issue is that the actress...might have erred on the wrong side..by apologizing to the so called "political activists" who are bent on ostracizing her. She should have taken the rebuttal by the political activists by the scruff of the neck and quashed their so –called protest. Her tame apology, certainly doesn’t send the right signal or vibes to any woman who wants to air her views ,as it will now be perceived that there exists an imaginary veil that prevents people from speaking their minds out. In one form, I feel the political men folk are showing their chauvinism too far, that poses serious implications on women’s rights. The way these PMK political cadres, behave when they say that she has no right to say whatever she said, projects an image that the role of the Indian woman in the society is just of a child bearing machine and not beyond that. What if the same comment had been said by some one like shah rukh khan or surya ? would the protests be of the same level and intensity so as to dethrone them of their position in tinsel town ? Her comments on female virginity, pre marital sex..were off the cuff comments , or more so views aired by her at an AIDS summit, where she advocated safe sex.. and said "premarital sex was ok as long it was done with protection.." . I am certainly not arguing and saying this statement was right or wrong ,but I believe that she as a democratic Indian Indian has every right to pass her views to a magazine on what she believes is right. Suhasini, a former actress and wife of the Indian film maker Mani ratnam...rightly supported khushboo in this regard. but going by the grapevine ..i guess she too would beat a hasty retreat by retracting back her statement ..and being forced to eat humble pie.

The Tamil political society at large ...(especially the goons who fill up the political vote banks and the ones who address gatherings in white and white ..masquerading a "heart for public service" ) makes me feel inherently queasy about their mental thought process...with all their actions ..Being highly prejudiced ...and dictated by the whims and fancies of their leader's plans to come one up against the opposition by stirring some hornets nest. I feel that people out here tend to get a touch uncomfortable when reality bites them.... as anything said or depicted openly evokes a huge hysterical opposition from the public (powered by the politicians and driven by the common man heh !!).

Digging further … khusboo made statements that “no sane guy can expect his wife to be a virgin “ was probably driven by the increase of pornographic acts on the web, like the DPS school video case and various other videos on the web.It is a true fact that the age girls take to say “yes” to experiment with sex is slowly decreasing to below15-16… and the girls today are more open than they were ever before, but for the tamil society to generalize that this statement was said “to debase the Tamil culture “ wholly speaks of extremely poor reasoning .

The tamil culture as such is said to be pure and respected because of the literary compositions,Vedas,slokas and a traditional form of life in the tamil households which also speaks volumes of the attachment the tamil community attaches to music .No where does it say that “sex” or the act of sex ..tends to debase culture. If one were to observe any famous Hindu temple in the south, the murals depicted here and the idols of the various gods adorning the walls or the gopuram’s show female gods in the nude and even in certain positions of love making. We were the people who taught the world what “kamasutra “ was and here we are living in a self imposed veiled society where having sex is great,but speaking about it evokes a strange protest from sects of people as though “sex” was something they renounced ages back.

Its not just the Tamil culture ,but this is prevalent in several places in India ,where sex is seen as something immoral and debasing and sense of moral policing takes place (in Mumbai the shiv sena , I heard used to ransack shops selling valentine day gifts because they thought”love “ was too western a culture….) , a kind of double speak ….which is now perfected by politicians and filmmakers to speak politically correct and not from their heart and maintain have their share of the vote bank.

Politicians and their diatribes are diluting the strength of the common man and his rights and unless we have a unanimous wave …that rebuts such peevish acts of petty revolting curbing a woman’s basic instincts to speak her mind out,we as a country ought not to have the “democracy” tag attached to our nation. The need of the hour is to reform this whole system with younger blood which thinks rationally and practically ,and not be prejudiced into devious and superstitious ways of thinking. Secondly we need to accept the act of sex for what it is and stop spreading a veil around it…as by doing this we are only increasing the curiosity levels of younger adolescents who with half baked knowledge ,try some juvenile voyeurish thing ,which would only need to further bottling up of our emotions about what people call “sensitive” topics and would result in a society that never speaks its mind out.