Listen to Lucky

I always loved SelvaRaghavan movies and in particular the movie Ayirathil Oruvan (Referred hereafter as AO) was my favorite of SelvaR. AO had a fantastic story in place where a group of people scouting for missing people in a remote island eventually landing up the island to meet the Chola tribe. I would request the reader to watch the movie from here to understand it better in case you had watched it. To cut the story short, after watching AO - the impact of lost Chola tribe reminded me of Lankan Tamils (with Reema resembling the Madam...Parthiban - the Savior/leader of the tribe...resembles whom...u would got it by now...and with army resembling IPKF). On top of this whenever a Lankan ethnic crisis discussion appears....there was a question lingering on the mind... as such who are the real sons of soil - was it people from Mahinda dynasty / Cholas from TN ?...as If I can recollect only after the Kalinga Battle and influence of Ashoka...Buddhism had its roots in Lanka. From Movie...

Following the reports of last few weeks regarding the financial Tsunami which is sweeping America and also the other parts of the Interdependent world, I was wondering how "coupled" we are with other parts of world. Probably this tsunami/pralayam might be good example of Chaos Theory which Kamalhassan tried to explain in Dasavatharam. There was a good article on ET by Mr S Iyer terming them whether this is the end of the beginning / most likely beginning of the end of US economical supremacy. Even though India has not fully opened up its markets (thanks to Left Front and few other political Geniuses), I fully understand the implications of this crisis which might have an impact on India as everybody understands except India's FM (with continuous rebuttals and playing safe with Media on the crisis). Even though i observe markets from the India's point of view, the first major symptom which shook me of was the sale of Bears and Sterns. 6 months later, we saw the fall of...

Are you a Vadama ? atleast a Tam Brahm ? Do you have H1, if yes can you please move closer to bay area ? I am 5ft 2 inches, I need a boy who is atleast 5'10" if not shorter than kobe bryant ? We prefer iyers from Palakad, if not preferably from pittsburgh. Give me a break. Broadminded / like minded / Innocent Divorcee / Chennai Only / H1B holder / East (or) West Coast - The List is endless.If you look into / get a chance to browse any of the matrimonial sites / the sunday edition of Hindu / vernaculars / matrimonial communities which are located in different pockets of Chennai / South India, you would have definitely come across these above stated preferences. What does H1B / anywhere in bay area going to do with your partner ? If i have preferences of settling in US, I would have accpeted to live as an american and marry an american. What do they mean broadminded ? - I might be broadminded but not to the extent of Shoba de. I have seen profiles of Innocent Divorcees on paper...

After a long hibernation, i am back into blogging. I am not sure whether i can blog that frequently as i used to do it before. Life has been on a fast lane after i had moved back to india. Everyday something or the other i learn in my life / job and it has been a steep learning curve. Initially, it was more like a cultural shock when you visit india after a long time (even though i had my visits every year, it is too small to notice a change). I went to a extent where i never used to honk when i drive for the first 15 days, and even it is more a nuisance to me if somebody honks just for the sake of fun/thrill. I had so many thoughts to pen down which ranges from Driving sense to the way the no-confidence motion was conducted. But I have decided to keep my mouth shut in my personal's interests and decided to observe more of late rather than reacting to all the things which happen (bound to happen) around you. The two things which i seriously enjoyed in India are my mom's food an...

It has been a fantastic two and half years of my life in UK mostly in Maidenhead and Reading with the fitting finale in central london. It resembled as if it was yesterday, but it has been tremendous couple of years, in which i had beautiful experiences of life, great friends, enjoyable vacations, tantalising tours to neighbouring countries, critical projects and what not. I had struggled my first month in this country, not knowing anyone (i was new to TCS as well), but i had great roomies in Veeru and Anand, with whom i shared one of the best parts of my life. There was so much of camaraderie among the three, but the relationships grew from good to great as each day passed by. Apart from the two, I shared a great relationships with Sreedhar Bhumaraju a.k.a Chirugaru, with whom, we had a gala time including vijayadasami celebrations. It would be unfair on my part if don't thank my friends viz., Jegan, Sandy mone, Dharam, sudip, Dinesh, Krishnan (affectionately mama) with family, Ga...

Metamorphosis - a.k.a "Parinama Valarchi....." How many times in life we would have crossed and seen a bud and would have missed the time to take note of that which has transformed into a flower ?. Similarly its very much possible that we miss the transformation of larva which struggles to become a butterfly. Quiet often we failed to observe our children / children of friends /relatives as they grow and we see them one day as grown up. Before observing others, if we introspect ourselves, how many times have stopped for a moment to observe that we have changed / transformed, before somebody realises and convey us that we have "grown up" before we observe ourselves. I see myself everyday both on and off the mirror (agathilum / purathilum - In/Out) to observe how much i have changed myself than the previous day. Very recently, I observed that i have transformed a lot within a week, probably this is what i believe that beginning of the metamorphosis. "Vedan valmiki...

Thanks to Adoor Goplakrishnan for suggesting a new title for my blog. This is not going to be another movie review of his recent film which he has directed. This is just my own observation of 4 different women, who belong to different genres, ethnicity, roots and profiles who are basically striving to push hard and move in their lives. Whenever i walk into one of the famous Indian restaurants which has branches even in UK apart from Chennai, I have observed the way P1 works in the restaurant. (It would be wise on my part to make the references and hide their original names). Basically she is from Poland, her langauage is different, her lifestyle is different, but she needs to survive and compete in this country which is as alien to her as it is to me/ to you. P2 works as a lecturer in one of the tutorial college and she also works in nearby supermarket store. I know her, as she stays as my neighbour and they are also from a hindu country which is marred with violence in the recent year...

Cinema is one of the "C" things which i would appreciate after Cricket/Carnatic Music/Cartoons/Coffee (the list is endless). There are very few people with whom i have shared great discussions with related to movies of World Panorama. Recently, I had a discussion with one of my friends called Venkat Reddy who has a great passion for world cinema. This guy runs a website called 24fps.com (translates as 24 frames per second) and he has been writing reviews of all the films which would be featured in film festivals and works as the special correspondent apart from owning the site. After couple of rounds of drinks on my farewell party, we had a interesting conversation, which started with Rituparno Ghosh's latest english movie and ended comparing Kurosawas to Francois Traffaut. The best part of the conversation moved towards Adoor's Naalu Penngal (4 women - one of the best titles i have picked for my next blog...) and his narration of the episode which featured padmapriya...

The last week was one of the few weeks where I am still enjoying my honeymoon period in office. With 2 more weeks to go and keeping my fingers crossed for my next assignment, it has been nagging week (with least amount of work - finally i had modify few scripts - except that i hardly have any great piece of work. The week was bit lengthy and but the week had few great moments to finish. It all started with Raja's Farewell (one of my colleague who has moved to work for BBC), the farewell drinks therafter. I had a gala time with few of my folks at the Island cafe (which is on the Thames Avenue) with a beautiful view of the riverside. We guys had fair amount of jokes/fun and i had a nice time with my Tennesse and a Margarita, watching the moonlight night from the armchair on the riverside and enjoying the drizzle which was tickling me and my thoughts. Saturday came and it was a different altogether, where i had destined to go to Acton and EastHam, but "Insha-Balaji", i was o...

Thanks to Geeman for tagging me and hailing me as a musical connoiseur. I have been planning to write an blog on music for a very long time and this was just a start from my favourites. I have tried to list down the best romantic duets in tamil films and here they are: TOP 10 romantic duets in tamil: Ulavum thendral katriniley - mandhiri kumari This was from the movie called mandhirikumari and this was one of the most romantic songs boat songs ever featured in B&W era. Probably doordarshan might be the only owner of this movie/print but still i enjoyed the tune (composed on the raag maandu which unfortunately tried in Iruvar's Narumugaye) and the tempo of the song set exactly as the tempo of the boat ride. MK radha one of the yesteryear actors was playing the negative shade in this movie had a brilliant portrayal. Maasile unmai kadhale - Alibaba and 40 thieves This was undoubtedly a masterpiece from the eastman color genre. This was one of the rare AM rajah - MGR combo (if not ...

I was literally amused by the way Azim Premji announced his son Rishad's arrival to take over the mantle from him. This was very much on the lines of the senior politicians in our country who initially will convey that their children will not step into politics or join their own party. But every party leader has his own son and daughter (latest to join in the list being "kanimozhi" for DMK/MK). I didn't understand this hypocracy of quoting that my children / i will not enter politics and step into the same after few years in a timely planned manner. The worst thing is that now software companies would follow the same as these munnetra kazhagams (which takes care of only their "munnetrams" and their families' munnteram). When I heard that rishad premji would be joining Wipro Munnetra Kazhagam, I was laughing at their Council's decision (Seyar Kuzhu mudivu...he he ellam namella edukarathu thaan...ketta Seyar Kuzhu...Sambhar Kuzhu nnu) I hope all these ...

I was reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L friedman and this would be one of the most cherished books of my personal collection. In one the chapters, when he discusses the case of Ellsworth vs Yahoo, he brings out a beautiful point. Excerpts from the Book: On November 13, 2004, Lance Cpl. Justin M. Ellsworth, twenty, was killed by a roadside bomb during a foot patrol in Iraq. On December 21, 2004, the Associated Press reported that his family was demanding that Yahoo! give them the password for their deceased son's e-mail account so they could have access to all his e-mail, including notes to and from others. "I want to be able to remember him in his words. I know he thought he was doing what he needed to do. I want to have that for the future," John Ellsworth, Justin's father, told the AP. "It's the last thing I have of my son." We are moving into a world where more and more communication is in the form of bits traveling through cyberspace ...

I was just going through the Hindu this morning and came to know that one of the XII std girl has committed suicide because of the fear of low marks scored in the recent examinations. Ever since the board exams came in mid eighties (if my memory is right, it was introduced by MGR govt in 1984), there is unusual tension which percolates to even the 80 year old granny in a family where one of the kids apperaing for the board exams (to scare somebody call it "public exams"). Are we producing Ramanujams and Ramans by these exams?. The max thing which would be brought by these exams are the corner seats allocated in the AIR 13 (thats my favourite room in REC trichy) for the so called elite students who keep mugging / reading things by heart (dabba adiakrathu / mug adikarathu in layman's parlance). I used to make fun about people (who keep mugging things as sukkumi-laguthi-ippli instead of sukku-milagu-thippili). I always like to provide instances to substantiate my reasoning. ...

I have been thinking on life and markets all the time and all of sudden i realised there are lot of common things which could be associated. The title - Lifex was abbreviated form of my life's index (which goes every week up and down). Though I am not Bernaud Baumohl, to list all the indicators as he quotes in his famous book. It all started this way, when i started sometime back to question, am i feeling good / bad compared to yesterday / last week / last year. Definitely, when you compare the living standards, salary, wealth, education (or) which is quantifiable /measurable, we would have definitely progressed. But when u compute all the parameters, few of them could be intangible, which can bring your up / down. As we have 30 stocks that determines sensex's performance, I just thot of identifying few stocks (idnetifiers) which would determine by Lifex's performance. Career Wealth Family Health Morale Vision knowledge spirituality Entertainment and self-realisation. The a...

I had a wonderful night session on music where i was picking up the best tunes which i had heard and came to best of the songs which were plaigraised / ultaa-ed in indian parlance to our desi audience. This song "chittuku nalla chittukku (from the movie nallavanukku nallavan) of illayaraja was one of my favourites as tempo of the song was very slow and this has been inspired from 18th century russian composer ( http://www.emusic.com/album/10872/10872285.html ) The best of the inspiration which i heard was a tamil song flicked from antonin dvorak symphony 9 ( http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/dvorak_sym9.html - listen to scherzo). The song was flicked by none other than maestro Illayaraja for a song called "chittu kuruvi vetkapaduthu" for the movie chinna veedu..(beautiful piece...) One of the interesting flicks made in hindi was by "Yeh dil na hota bechara" http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/H000691.html from jewel thief (composed by S D Burman) was flick...

The subject of today's blog, in my opinion, is one of the œuvre d'art (masterpiece of creation of God) next to water a.k.a Adam's Ale. If you can infer from the title, you get a pat from me. Its the "Human Brain". I always wonder how "bill gates" and next door neighbour "bhagyam mami", though both are gifted with similar brains, they differ in their extremities of thoughts. I am not going to talk about cerbellum/spinal fluids...blah blah. The thing which fascinates me, still "where does a thought begin ? how do we initiate a thought ? what makes us to think ? - these sort of questions are the ones which fascinates me. In our Uttar Pradesh a.k.a Brain, there is neither lockouts/hartals/strikes as our communist friends who keep doingin bengal, nor it experiences crashes, memory leaks etc as my office pc. If it is all that is true that "Mind is set to rule the world" as google, we could have courses to condition our minds instead of...

As the title suggests, i always had a fascination to when i read and observed the mela kartha raagas (which are basic "mother" raagas - 72 in number) had a similarity with mendeleev's periodic tables. The similarity which i have noticed (could be done by lots of ppl who can relate the "chemistry" between bhilari and shankarabharanam). Basically the 72 raagas can be classified into 2 sections (one with "shuddhamadhyamam(it denotes swara ma)" and the other set with "prathimadhyamam" (in languages, it has to be "nedil/badi ma").It has another classical history that these classification of raagas follow Katapayadi sankhya shastra. This technique is more like a modern day algorithm which classifies the raagas and number them based on the mathematical numbers and swarastanas. If you see the periodic tables advocated by dmitri mendeleev , he classifies them based on valency and weight. similarly the chemical elements have been grouped as ...