Friday, November 23, 2007

Cricket Country!

India is the land of culture, tradition, yoga...and cricket! Tourists can't get enough of the first three and we Indians can't get enough of the last! Having learned the game from our one-time conquerors, the Brits, we've modified it many times over to bring in a more local appeal. We've given it names like "box cricket" and "gully cricket" and introduced our own rules to either ensure a fast-paced game or to insure against breaking our neighbour's windows!

Last weekend, while on a family vacation in Dapoli, I witnessed my first game of beach cricket. Not that I've never seen people play cricket on the beach, but there's a difference between a bunch of holidayers hitting a ball around the beach and a bunc
h of local kids coming together for a quick game of cricket before the sun goes down. The latter is all business! What made it more interesting is that these kids weren't playing on the beach because it was a novelty; it was probably their only play ground close to home. And yet again, the game was modified to suit the arena. Hitting the ball into the sea restricted the batsman to one run, and to quicken the pace—these kids had to get back to running their family-owned shops in the village and everyone wanted to bat—every batsman had to take one run of two balls. Simple rules, and loads of fun!

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Buddy!

Buddy is my sister's Labrador. Only about 8 months old, but built like a darn horse! This guy is like a seriously hyperactive kid, with a fetish for footwear! I like this picture because it seems like he posed for it, and that's quite an achievement considering how difficult it is to get him to sit quiet. If he ever gets a movie offer because of this picture, I'm going to have to send him a bill!

Lights, Camera, Action!

Some more action, shot on my new camera! You can tell that the next few dozen posts are going to be dedicated to my budding hobby! Last evening, I shot some pictures of the fireworks going off right opposite my balcony. I stood there for half an hour, aiming and firing at any and every rocket that went up in the sky, while my family went "ooh!" and "aah!" at the vibrant display of colors. The camera has a special "Scene" setting that lets you click pictures of fireworks as well. I just had to try it out.

Diwali can be a rather chaotic mix of beautiful lights and fireworks displays that light up the evening sky and noisy firecrackers that continue to go off late into the night, thanks to obnoxious and uncaring neighbors!

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

In 8 Mega Pixel

My latest pride and joy is my spanking new digicam, the Sony DSC H7. We bought it last Sunday and I have this silly smile plastered on my face ever since! 15x optical zoom and 8.1 megapixel...sweet! I'm no professional photographer, not even close, but this camera can give anyone a hobby! I'm still figuring out its features and all the different settings. For now, here are a couple of pictures I clicked. The second picture (the lanterns) is courtesy a friend and colleague, Jeba Dharamraj. I love the perspective!



Thursday, October 18, 2007

Fond Farewell

My work life is soon going to be a lot emptier. Tomorrow will be the last day at work for two of my closest friends. When I first heard they'd turned in their papers, I wasn't too perturbed. After all, moving on is a necessity of life. I was happy for them because they were happy for themselves. But the enormity of their decision only hit home this evening. Before I left for home, I took a trip down memory lane, looking at some old photographs and reliving some of the memories that we had made together over the past three years. And that's when I realized how badly I would miss them. Not because they're moving to another city, but just because they won't be there for the 8 hours during which I've learned to take their companionship for granted.

It's a funny thing, friendship. It begins tentatively, then slowly blossoms, growing stronger as you care and nurture it. Sometimes you don't even bother too much about nurturing it; it just grows on you like a habit. Sometimes it takes over your life to such an extent that it starts suffocating you. You become cranky and crabby and holler for some much needed space. And strangely, when that space does present itself, you suddenly feel a little alone. You want to reach out for the old and the familiar. Perhaps this space is exactly what we all need, to ignite the old fires of camaraderie. Begin new memories that will spark off new, exciting conversations. New tales, new jokes, new gossip with the old yet true friends.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

A Walk in the Clouds...at Panchgani

15th August was a much appreciated break from work and the missus and I took the 14th off as well to enjoy two relaxing days in Panchgani. Some of the members of my extended family own a place in this hill station. The peace and quiet of the place make it a frequent haunt for family members, especially Lisa's dad. So come 14th morning, the missus and I drove down with her dad and sister. The holiday was a welcome break for me from my regular chore of driving between home and work. Stopping for breakfast along the way is part of the family tradition of holidaying at Panchgani. Lisa's dad usually picks a nice spot and we stop for sandwiches and coffee. This time he picked a doozy!

I don't always like going down to the family home in Panchgani. It's quiet and peaceful...and it gets to me after a while! I'm not the sit back and relax type anyway. (There are only so many books one can read on a vacation!) But what grabs me about the place is the magnificent, breath taking view. The three-room bungalow sits overlooking a deep ravine, with a lake running at the bottom, and small village houses dotting the landscape. Bang opposite the bungalow, in the distance, the mountainous terrain continues. Each of the three rooms has big windows that open out onto this view and every morning the sheer beauty of it hits you full in the face. My favorite moment on every Panchgani trip is sitting on the porch with my first cuppa coffee, watching the mountains in the distance, feeling the breeze blowing through the silver oaks that line the edge of the drop. Imagine if you will the mists coming up towards you from the mountains across, stretching over the wide expanse in between, bit by bit blocking out your view of the lake below until suddenly there is but a white nothingness extending out from 10 ft ahead of you! Heavenly!

Friday, July 27, 2007

Road Rage!

I had a rather funny 'road rage' incident the other day. I live in Pune, and when you live in a city that is famous for its ridiculously bad roads and mismanagement, driving the odd 14 kms to work becomes a mammoth task. As you get close to the end of your 40-minute drive, it's not very difficult to lose your temper if you're already exasperated and red in the face 10 minutes after you left home!

So I'm driving down to work with the missus. I'm irritated because the driving is getting to me now (the missus doesn't drive yet) and the bad roads and traffic aren't making things easier. The missus and I have been working out of different office buildings for the last 2 months. We get to her building first and I pull over so she can get out. As I'm about to pull back onto the road, I look into the rear view mirror and see a handcart approaching. I think to myself "Okay, good! This guy's gonna block the traffic behind me. So I can go." And so I get back onto the road and start driving. As it so happens I get a bit close to a biker, not very close in my opinion but close enough so that he gets a scare. The biker turns around and starts staring me down, then decides he doesn't want to just drive off without saying his piece. So he slows down. Like I already said, I was irritated by then and I decided I wasn't going to back down either. So I pull up next to him, looking really pissed off all the while. He stares as I roll my window down and probably arrived at the conclusion that things wouldn't go very well for him if they got out of hand and visibly calmed down a bit.

"Indicator de kar kyon nahin chalate?" he asked. I was expecting him to come up with something nastier, something that would make it easier to get out of the car and throw a couple of punches, let out some of that aggression. Without a pause I lean over and yell back, "Indicator chalu hi tha, samjha?" and then drove off feeling very stupid! No more words exchanged, no abuses even and neither of us even made a fist!

Damn! I guess some people give road rage a bad name don't we?

Friday, July 13, 2007

9/11, Planes 'Falling', and a Grammar Course

I script courses for a living. Not a very flashy means of sustenance but it has its moments. The courses I script are meant for clients the world over. A good number of clients I have interacted with are Americans. Good ol' Americans! They who elected Bush...twice! They who make life a living hell for us writers with their senseless Americanization of the Queen's language, the basic premise for which is "Let's just spell everything differently in the US of A, shall we?" They who reached an all new height of paranoia ever since a bunch of Islamic extremists decided to commit yet another act of terrorism, about six years ago, but on American soil.

Ever since the tragic 9/11 occurrence, the most powerful nation in the world has been reduced to nothing more than a bunch of paranoid blustering idiots with a serious case of prejudice towards brown skinned people wearing any kind of headgear. But how deep this paranoia runs would have to be seen to be believed. Recently, I scripted a course that was meant to teach basic English skills to Arab males working with an oil manufacturing company. And rest assured, the said company is definitely not a front for jehadis!

Once the scripts were ready, they were sent to an American voice over artist to record the necessary VO for the course. The artist came back a day later, saying that there was a rogue sentence in one of the exercises. This rogue sentence would make it quite difficult for him to export the recorded content without spending a lifetime in a US prison! The exercise required learners to pick a correct word from a list and complete a number of sentences. The missing word for the rogue sentence was "ground." The completed rogue sentence would have read as, "The airplane made a lot of noise when it fell to the ground." This was enough to send quite a few people at the recording studio into a tizzy, first because they thought the sentence described an air crash in a nonchalant manner and next because they were convinced that certain government officials would definitely see this sentence as being 'terroristic!'

The result? The course is yet to be developed, with final judgment yet to be passed on the rogue sentence. I can only hope that a plane does not really fall and hit the ground before this time. Till then, if you're reading this blog, don't send mails to your relatives abroad with words like 'airplane', 'crash', 'boom', 'bang!'



Friday, May 25, 2007

Pictures from my Camera

Gundip Paaji
I got a new mobile recently, the MotoMing. I had a great first few weeks figuring out the different features on the phone. And, of course, I had to try out the camera! So here are some pics I liked.

Astik












Astik Letting his Hair Down!