the mad world song is ringing in my ears. i am doomed to have not seen donnie darko.
in the morning i was listening to all these songs .....
mad world
streets of philadelphia - bruce springsteen
philadelphia by neil young

long ago i had seen the youtube video of the streets of philadelphia, i dont have access to youtube, and the pictures haunt me.
and its bad that i havent seen philadelphia either.

the need to be sad and calm and be let alone.

wassup?

wassup with all these people making sales?

wassup with all these people going to US ?

wassup with esellerate, and reg now n cnet?

wassup with amazon?

wassup with all these guys who think it is all right?

wassup with barrack obama n mccain?

wassup with these people going head over heels for gmat?

wassup with 9.4 / 10 or 3.97 / 4? ( i mean what the hell is that all about???!!!)

wassup with people not inviting me to parties?

wassup with those carcasses hanging in shops?

wassup with these auto walas?

wassup with reading books and listening to music and love, and writing blogs and talking and wanting and knowing that its all gonna be alright?

i am in the office and my back tingles with a little pain. the long weekend has definitely refreshed me, yet at the same time i feel sad. i thought a lot and the thinking, like most of my endeavours was not to a certain end. it was as puposeless as it ever was. and i wasted time and lied and worried. and oh dear god, so much time wasted walking down the kutchcha roads, riding buses, watching umpteenth time the episodes of the "friend"ly sitcom. i figured so many hours and days of the 24 years of my life have passed pondering, listening to music, singing to myself, thinking, looking and seeing into some unknown. and i wonder if there is some romance to such purposeless meanderings. sure, what i know for sure is that i am like that only. and i do see some beauty if not much else. do i learn? on some levels yes, on some others no. some time ago i was sad doing what i did, now i am not, doing the same old love.
on friday i had lunch at jeevi's place. we had pretty engrossing discussions about what goes on in our respective companies. we touched on so many matters about the way work goes on, and that people stop learning, and the ones who taught us have been so .... and the ones around us are so..... and we ought to be so.....
then we talked much more and then there wasn't much to talk.
then i saw the dark knight again.
the next day i bought books from blossoms. (the shop is way better than its website) i cannot begin talking about the shop. but it has made life so much better and richer and livable in bangalore.
i was wondering, what if we make a cumulative sum of all the homeworks that we have done in our life. yes, the school homework, starting from kindergarten. a small task that someone (supposedly) older and wiser than us asked us to do. and ask ourselves, if i did all those homeworks with twice as honesty and completeness of PURPOSE, we would be different people. again lets go back to a moment. there was a moment when we were fresh, and we didnt have these webs in our minds. the next moment our approach to doing work changed. someone asked us to do something and the way we agreed to it, the way we did it, and how much of it we did changed completely.

but it has to be said, dark knight could have been more enunciated. it irks me that it is twisted in terms of evidences, the reasons for particular turns of events, particularly of course in the second half.
and now i m sad.
there always is some factor, some piece of the puzzle that is missing. there isnt ever a PERFECT movie.
but kudos to nolan brothers who have managed to put such moral complexity on screen that also has the popcorn entertainment value. the visuals are the most lucrative asset of this film. add to that the uneasy position of the hero. not enough can be said about the villain, so i wont start again, but that is the reason why the movie needs to be watched again and again.

the dark joker

"Why so serious son?" is ringing in my ears still.
will the real heath ledger please stand up? now everybody knows heath ledger, unfortunately , though.
you are haunting my head.
the nolan brothers must have read thomas harris and of course much more because they have put The Joker right up there with Hannibal Lecter and Francis Dolarhyde.
Harvey Dent and Batman are left stunned by the joker. he has brought out the other side in them. very much like will graham harvey dent falls prey to the devil inside him. the joker takes menacing pleasure in tinkering with them. he doesnt plan, he just does things. "you are the schemers - and look where your schemes got you. i just do things and show people like you how pathetic their attempts at controlling things are.i am an agent of chaos. and chaos is fair."

the batman legend, the gadgets, the technology, the aura of evil and the icing on the cake - the joker.
this joker is a completely different animal. totally blew my mind. and its my stomachful of satisfaction that nolan brothers could identify that joker and made a part of the batman movie. superb job.
i ll write more when i have time.

If you know it or not...... doesnt make a difference.

Jaane tu, yaa jaane na.
it was a very real and intelligent movie. not mushy mushy n emotional at all as i had suspected. after seeing the film i realized that there really hadnt been much depicted about what people felt as opposed to what people did and behaved and affected lives of others. that is very real and true and someone needed to put that on film. much part of the film is comedy. and it works! its a heady mix of old and new actors. comedy relies in calculated amounts on the oldies - ratna pathak, naseeruddin shah (cool couple in film as wel as in real life) and paresh rawal, while the group of youngsters is funny and cute. good choice of young actors. they look like people next door. very real and they speak without pretense. though lack of finish shows a little bit in the dancing but thats okay, they smile very sweetly.
the good thing is its not a one sided affair. the diro abbas tyrewala who has also written the dialogues and lyrics doesnt focus on a same concept in all the scenes. there are sub plots which are very independent and interesting yet connected with the main theme (guy-girl - good friends - care for each other - never know if its love until .....) its amazing to see that each and every character has a story ..... so a very intelligently written story by abbas.
the film doesnt sound loud in the sense it doesnt boast of being too much in love with the story it is trying to tell. its not intense in its depiction of love or friendship or how sweet n cute these group of young people are. the story and the turn of events speak louder than the characters or the music....... the music! how many times has it happened that a r rahman's music was too good while the movie bombed? i think thats happened a lot. here a r rahman does the work only when he requires to. pappu cant dance, nazrein milana, Kahin To Hogi Woh, are hummable yet arent exceptional. the jazz drums wala song Tu Bole, Main Boloon sets such an amazing tone to the film that its nostalgic. Aditi doesnt need words to describe.
i looooooved the movie. can see it again. wont need any company.
still havent seen the room in hebbal. the new office feels good. the changes now smell exciting as oppsed to the dismal. still too many loose ends to tie. need courage for that.

Changes

i have tried hard not sound like i m complaining.
on the monday, two weeks ago, my bosses, g and h call our team for a meeting.
"is it good news?"
"of course its good news"

i will never forget how their faces seemed. g had a mischievous smile. and he was pacing a bit swiftly. h was not letting any expression slip out much from her face. i think she was thinking a lot and was making calculated communication.

from july g and h are going to be the premium partners of our company. my bosses are leaving the company and forming their own company. they will be doing pretty much the same job, selling the same software but that just wont be done being in the same company.
the location of my company office is going to change from infantry road to hebbal. i am looking for place to live near hebbal. i was got this place near infantry rd in may. no i cannot commute from viveknagar to hebbal. i answered this question far too many times in my head.

on 3rd july i came to know that my dad had urinary tract infection and is admitted in hospital. he had fever and low bp. diabetes and a heart attack 7 years ago dictated caution. i went home over the weekend. i lost my mobile phone.

a from my team has left the company. s was taken into their company by G n H. from august new associated directors shall be in place. new teams. anything is possible.

the sunday before yesterday was very memorable, jeevi n rekha madam came to meet me at my place. i showed them my little "casa de nike" (yeah i borrowed that from joey, die hard friends fans shall recall).
we had lunch at "grameen" rural ambience, north indian food. really good food. authentic. then the proverbial "shopping" followed, which was a first for me. then on, my first salary has been thoroughly drenched, exhausted, squeezed, sucked, squashed out of all the crevices and pores of my pockets. rekha madam and jeevi gifted me a t shirt!!! (then i bought two for myself). the place is the Forum mall in kormangala.
i think i live in the epicentre of the axis of shopping, eating and money spending. from viveknagar (where lies my 1 room kitchen) garuda mall, forum mall, bangalore central, hyderbadi biryani, blossoms book house, higgin bothams, oasis mall, empire hotel and other places that i havent visited yet are equidistant and 10 minutes ride from my place.
anyway, we saw sarkar raj which we shouldnt have.
i am a patient man, very very patient man. and i have two ladies to certify that. while they are talking hard on the colours and quality of cloth in westside i was patiently observing what they were doing; and on other times i was on the lookout for birds. and the other times i captured the ladies on the camera.

last sunday i watched indiana jones

the week before that, 21,

the week before that, Prince Caspian,

the week before that, Iron Man,

this week i will read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby instead of going to "Sex & the City"

A month ago, my agent showed me some really horrible places to live in on a saturday. on monday morning he calls me in office hours to tell me that he has found a "beautiful" place to live in. i took it. thats the place i m living in now. i love it as a matter of fact, it really is good.

but thats the game they play, they will show the ugly ones first. i got the picture that there really isnt a good place easily to be found. i got desperate.

maybe i m stretching it a bit too much, maybe i ll sound too old for my age ......

a regular middle class father of a girl will get ugly ones first for her, so that she doesnt have much liberty to be choosy. "Handsome young men are difficult to come by.......... or what is it?"

and here's a bad one, the one after seeing the first guy "How can my dad think that i m worth a man this ugly...?"

I now live near K R Puram Bus stand. The bus stand does not exist.
Every time i am waiting for the bus i am under the threat of being run over by the bus, mini bus, truck, mini truck, autorickshaw, motorcyclists, vegetable vendors and many more high speed heavy machines which are running. the road disappears into the dust and people like me are standing at the side only to be shooed by these big guys. for the fear of being run over we run helter skelter.
there is no place safe which is meant for people to stand and wait for the bus, a place where any vehicle cannot go. apart from the fact that buses come to this place there is no other sign which indicates that this place is a bus stand.
but why am i complaining? life is good now. but as always i complain and doubt.
have been religiously reading black swan when i get a seat in the bus and the bus is stuck in the notorious bangalore traffic. this book is life changing. many ideas corroborated with what i had learnt in landmark education. Corroboration! Now that is something to learn about from this book! check it out to understand what i mean.

i just now remembered the movie swades. the memory of good movies is super. the music of ar rahman makes me feel the cool breeze, bright sunshine, green landscapes. authentic movies come by rarely. what i dont understand is that why does every movie need to have the hero fall in love with a beautiful woman. even the best and well made movies with a powerful message as in the movie swades, has the hero falling in love. cant they consider the possibilty that the movie has no love story. the message of entrepreneurship and love of the motherland should have overshadowed the love story. because the message deserves undivided attention from the filmmakers to make the impact on the audience.

Update: lets talk about realism. swades is an awesome movie. but if it talks of the real situation of our country its not realistic on the human front. mohan and gita are two strong personalities. why is it that they will surely fall in love? in real life shit happens. the finest of the young people never get along. the best of the entrepreneurs, managers, life saving doctors, benevolent evangelists, are gonna have shitty personal lives and broken relationships. i watched too much dr. house a month ago and while watching i got this feeling "life is unfair and genuinely impartial. and that is usual"
or maybe i m not so much concerned about swades, its just my current state of mind.

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I have understood that there is a world of difference between doing business successfully and doing a profitable business. creating value for your customers is not every business's ball game. earning money, amassing wealth has nothing to do with creating value.
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two of my friends have started blogging. i m not permitted to disclose one url, the other one is this. welcome moi3.

Randy Pausch, the Tigger.

I have been besotted by Randy Pausch. the speech is mind boggling.
the complete last lecture is here

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950

shorter versions are here

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k0aO64aKqek&feature=bz302
(On Oprah Winfrey show)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utwFZsSFke0&NR=1
(he is ABC's person of the week)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWIT8x4b4gU&NR=1
(on CNBC)

his home page

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

at the end of one of these interviews he says "I like living" and that is from the mouth of a person who is going to die in the matter of weeks. that was the defining moment for me, when all his words made a synergy, a whole new meaning, when for a second my heart stopped beating and i thought every living moment is a gift.
i thought at the end of the oprah winfrey show he had become feeble when he mentioned his children.
i think his story is remarkably similar to richard feynman's.

i feel it in my bones...

last night i had a tough time breathing, long time since i had that sick feeling like the balloon in my chest is poisonous. it took me a fair bit of time to go to sleep. but today evening i felt a pleasant presence in the air. i think winter is approaching. its a nice feeling. the air feels silky, yes i think its silky coz its not cold or chill. i feel a slight electricity in the air, and a similar feeling i have every year around diwali.....

holiday

today, was a holiday and i slept like a log. all my plans for the day went in the drain as after a hearty and satisfying lunch, i slept quite easily. now, a point to consider here is since i called my lunch "hearty and satisfying" it could not have been in the hostel. i have not always been so skeptical of the mess food, but lately i observed that not having a good meal made me irritable. but in today's case it resulted in quashing of all my plans.
as i was going out today i suddenly loved seeing "houses". yes, a bit queer as it may seem, i observed different types of houses and homes. in this locality of puttappa colony, thippasandra, houses are small, mostly. there are flats and individual houses. sunshine is plenty and the wind was blowing very nicely. the whole environment around the urban households is very warm, energetic and something is happening all the time around the houses. and two ladies were up in the balcony keenly observing and chatting about whats happening. clothes of all kinds were hanging from windows and balconies.
probably i was getting homesick. i so wanna be at home and eat the home food. these homes could be small to live in i fear. i was reminded the time when i was searching a one room kitchen for rent. hated that time. but people live so happily i thought. the whole business of living in small abodes in busy city. small neglected existences involved in their own chores with such renewed enthusiasm over and over again, everyday.

the people out there

people dont always mean what they say. what they say often hurts us. if i look closer, it is just us, ourselves who is letting ourselves get hurt.
a benevolent, compassionate view of the world is difficult to come by. if i say that all the people of the world, my friends, my colleagues, teachers, parents, small children playing in the street, shopkeepers, waiters, etc. are actually very nice people. they are innocent. they do and say things on accounts of reasons beyond my knowledge. that i will never know. there is something out there which i dont know that i dont know. but i just gotta believe that the world out there is GOOD and innocent, but its not how it will physically appear always. so, what i am saying is -
1. world - (the people, essentially) is good.
2. it wont always APPEAR that way
3. why is it so? you' ll never know, so dont break your head over it.
4. believe in the goodness, and get your work done (the key to success and happiness)

you will continuously get the stimuli that will puzzle you. people shouting at you, challenging you, make you angry, tease you, beat the hell out of you, invite you to be nasty, compete with you and what not. you gotta succeed, and keep your self esteem in tact. but at the end of the day you have to keep the faith that they are all good. you have to be compassionate. stop trying to understand. you can never understand any person fully, ever!
but the happy, good, benevolent view of the world is inspiring. i had this experience when i was presenting a case on Walt Disney in the international business class. it was my first presentation of the second term. and before i started to walk towards the front of the class, i recited in my head many sentences something to this effect - "the audience are my friends. they are eager to listen to me. they want to know what i have got to say."
when we are in a negative spiral, we neglect the positive stimuli. i remember in my past i refused to see the good things in myself. i refused to see the opportunities i had. i just wasnt happy about what i had. i sulked about what i didnt have.

in a positive spiral, you identify the negative stimuli. you dont turn blind to them. you say "what i see is not the truth." smile and believe that the reason for this might be beyond my knowledge, but my faith in the goodness of the world and the people around me is ultimate and strong as a rock. he is saying or doing this because of something which is beyond my knowledge. but i will not get influenced in a negative way because of this.positive spiral is not reactive. it is not outside in, it is inside out. my actions are not a response to what others say or do but my beliefs and integrity in action.

an impulse post..

i think probability is one of the most potent forces governing our lives. or uncertainty, so to speak.
am i being ignored? left out? No, its just your feeling. its chance working on you. you were left out just by chance, like maybe few others. but we fall prey to this and create our beliefs, misunderstandings and judge yourself and others. its a trap to which i fell many times. its tempting if you are in the self victimizing mode.

pleasant change

I am on my own. Finally.

Now I can open the window and once and for all let the sunlight come in, even if its limited in amount. The problem is that the window opens in front of another apartment, so there isn’t direct sunlight. But till now, in the last seven months my roomie, lets call him khatauli, must have let me open that window for number of times that can be counted on fingers. So, there was hardly any sunlight and no air circulation whatsoever. The arrangement in the room was terrible. I had to keep my table in front of my bed because there want enough space. There want enough space to move around.
But things just got a hell lot better! My roomie left for a single room, and the room for two is now all for me!! I immediately made the changes and now I cant stop admiring my room. It seems like there’s a new lease of life. I now have lots of space to keep my things, which have grown every term, I think. I even pasted inspirational quotes and photos. I pasted a photo of Richard Feynman, articulating in his classroom ("what do you care, what other people think?" he says) this man’s life and thoughts are sheer inspiration, even if you don’t much care about physics. the life of ER doctors i feel is inspirational. and the part in the movie "city of angels in the end, meg ryan rides bicycle on a serene road.




I did not sleep in the last 24 hours. This is serious. I don’t have much workload, and there isn’t much to read either (at least not now I am not reading) but why did I not sleep? I kept thinking a lot and reading random stuff. Its not like I did not feel sleepy, at around 2.30 I made up my mind not to sleep. At 4 ate bread with chesespread and drank coffee (that now keeps me alive and makes sure I leave for college at 8 30 in the morning.

Max martin is an amazing musician. Most of the backstreet boys, n-sync songs are composed by him, love those thumping techno music. In the night I was reminded of the days in my high school when I used to listen to those a lot. Its fun.

current music :"get another boyfriend" by Backstreet Boys - (attack of the cheesy cliche!!! i know but the music is awesome)