First Impressions

1. Speed.
2. Open spaces and greenery - including coniferous trees- firs, the kind you imagine snow falling on at Christmas. Exciting.
3. No people anywhere. Nobody from whom to ask directions, share a smile, standing on street corners aimlessly.
4. Stranger in a strange land. I'm in a movie, this isn't, this can't be real.
5. NJ is supposed to be full of Indians, but I'm yet to see one.
6. That mattress is soft!
7. Flying over Europe was exciting. Shapes I thought I recognised from atlases. Was that the Caspian Sea? Were those the British Isles? How small they are!
8. I don't quite miss home yet, but that's because everything feels surreal so far. I don't think I've quite got it. Across the world, somewhere, my parents are having a drink, my dogs are frisking around, my world is lying still, a snapshot, frozen in the instant of my leaving.
9. Walmart to find an international phonecard. Huge beyond belief. I could get lost there.
10. Hazelnut flavoured coffee, a window overlooking the street and green trees.
11. Early to bed, early to rise, jet lag still there. I'm functioning on Paris time, I think. Early to office, barely anybody here, I'm the only one without a laptop, without work. Waiting for the office administrator to get in and orient me. Becase I'm disoriented.

Frog Will Have Left The Building

This will be the last post I'll be writing from India for a couple of months, I suspect, unless Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport in Mumbai lays claim to deserted cyber-cafes open for all-night use. In the quiet morning, then, there will be more words. Insha-allah.

New Mastercard Commercial

OR The story of our weekend in Goa

• 3 days stay in romantic room in cozy little hotel: Rs. 3600
• Para-sailing together, high above the world, where only we exist: Rs. 800
• Food and drink consumed all day, sitting in a shack and running down to gambol in the waves: Rs. 500
• Having to run, in little blue trunks and tight blue swimsuit, respectively, to the Government Medical College after the waves gamboled with A and dislocated his shoulder: priceless!
  

Footnote:
GMC Goa, in Bambolin, is unbelievable, and in a good way. It's clean, the doctors (at least those in casualty) are efficient and quick and have a great bedside manner to boot. There's no harassment, even the helper guys - who would be touts in many other places - are helpful. My advice is, if you must have a mild incident that requires casualty medical treatment, do it in Goa. As the T-shirt says, "it's better in Goa."

Vignettes, zimbly.

Bangalore is cloudy, with a grey mist hiding the sun even at 6:00 p.m., when it's annoyingly hot and sunny in Mumbai. In another city, this would be gloomy. Here, it just is, and you bask in it.

Big yellow sign-boards of concrete, resting on two columns and with a temple-architecture top and black squiggly kannada script, stand at the corners of well-ploughed streets.

A prominent hoarding tells reckless young bikers, sternly, "You have only one head. Wear a helmet. Courtesy Bangalore Police." Sage advice. The roads here are twisted with traffic, badly maintained ruts of red mud and dust over which helmet-less boys play a modern-day version of hopscotch with their bikes, swerving in and out through the overwhelming, crawling, stinking traffic, play-acting at being characters in a video game.

Last weekend, I went to Koramangala - to an area that is less than a 5-minute walk from where I used to live a few years ago. And it's unrecognisable. All the open grounds have been taken out, and apartments and banks of concrete and steel and glass put in. I'm appalled, but had Forum been around when I was staying there, at least going to the movies would have been easier.

The surge in population and traffic have an inverse relationship to the road surface area. Going anywhere inspires sheer dread. The bus to work bumps and grinds down roads that could second as a Himalayan-biking track. No question of sleeping on the way there, but the body adapts and dozes, and wakes up just as we take the last right turn, just as I would always wake up just as the train approached Churchgate in the morning. Mercurial.

Through the grey, smoky, impenetrable haze of a mal-nutritioned city shooting up without being able to balance its growth, its hard to find positives to focus on. Perhaps because the positives I seek in coming "back" somewhere are so tied up with my own past... "This is where I used to live and look what they've done to it."

What they've done is this: They've removed the trees and mown down the houses; injected tall buildings and covered up the fields; removed my friends and brought in strangers. And in the process, razed my memories to dust.

Viva la progress, viva la change.

bibli·ophi·lism

Context:
Maverick. He got me.

Background:
bib·li·o·phile
also bib·li·o·phil (-fl) or bib·li·oph·i·list (bbl-f-lst) n.
~ A lover of books.
~ A collector of books.
bibli·ophi·lism n. bibli·ophi·listic adj.

So here goes.

Books I own:
Quanta mean nothing. It's the flavour that counts.

To create frog's book cupboard, start with a solid grounding of Little Women... The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh... All the Mowgli Stories, the classics... muchos Enid Blyton (end to end)... William... Jules Verne and HG Wells... Satyajit Ray... Tolkien... Gerald Durrell... Tales from Long Ago.
Add juice of Alistair Maclean, Louis L'amour, Michael Crichton, Ken Follett, Ludlum. Fold and pour in essence of Maya Angelou, Simone de Beauvouir, Ayn Rand, Margaret Atwood, Steinbeck, Updike.
Generously add Agatha Christie, Paul Auster, Peter Hoeg and Muchael Cunningham; Garcia Marquez, Blake and Neruda, Antoine de St. Exupery, Richard Bach, Grahame Greene, Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee.
Sprinkle chopped Ian McEwan, Pico Iyer, Alexander Frater, Paul Theroux and add a pinch of Roald Dahl and Saki.
Garnish with Watterson, Goscinny and Uderzo, Rowling, Fielding and Hornby and store in bottles away from light and dust to take out and sun twice a year. Pore over when putting back. For best results, open and sniff on long cool afternoons with the sun shaded behind curtains at windows opening onto green leaf sunshine, or in the still night when the house slumbers deep and a sleepy dog cocks one ear at the sound of the cupboard door being opened and settles in for a long night of it.

Still want numbers?


Last few books I bought:
Clearly, the last few memorable books I've bought
1. Maximum City - Suketu Mehta
2. Couples - John Updike
3. Leviathan
4. Agatha Christie - Autobiography


Last book that was gifted to me:
The IDEO book

Last book(s) I've read:
1. Maximum City
2. My Family and Other Animals (for the umpteenth time)
3. High Fidelity
4. Cause Celeb
5. Bodily Harm
6. Euclid's Window - The story of geometry from parallel lines to hyperspace
7. Impossibility - The Science of Limits and The Limits of Science (again)


Five books that mean something to me:
1. Congo (For reasons I can't fathom. And even on the 100th reading, it's un-put-downable)
2. To Kill A Mockingbird.
3. Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow.
4. Little Women
5. 100 Years of Solitude
6. Winnie-the-Pooh
6. Agatha Christie - Autobiography
7. A Home at the End of the World
(I know, I know, I can't count...)

Books I plan to read soon
1. If, on a winter's night...
2. Siddhartha


And finally, people I hope will respond to the clarion call:
Kraz
Yesbob
Boogerballs
Pranav
Mobius Tripping


Meanwhile, a parting thought.
The universe is not made from atoms, but from stories.

warm glow evening

light rain-laden evening breeze drifts over balcony through doors wraps itself around golden lamplight drapes itself around us cradling coffees and teas and smokes variously conversation flows connections happen memories flutter awake laughter and light and warmth and Baileys feet up on the couch silver glints in soft light welcome to the machine but here for an instant take a break fall back into timeless friendship no words needed being there is enough the air pregnant with shared pasts left behind listening to Shirley Bassey I don't give a damn about lost emotions and for once our ghosts don't crowd us and there is peace and laughter and wonder that this can still be

A-Movie-A-Day

So Kraz tagged me sometime recently, sneaking up on me in the middle of the timeless afternoon and screaming, "You're it", before running off into the sunset, leaving only the sound of his shrill laughter behind.

Alright, so I'm it. So here goes:

Films I own (the ones I'd like to name)
Monsters Inc., My Fair Lady, Gupi Gayne, Bagha Bayne. Does Yes Minister count too?

And hey, I started buying films only recently, so let's talk about the films I'd like to own:
Singing in the Rain, The Untouchables, Life is Beautiful, American Beauty, Pather Panchali, Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines, The Lord of the Rings (all three - I think Peter Jackson did a phenomenal job on a fundamentally unfilmable book), Gone with the Wind (ditto), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (ditto)

Last Film I bought
Murder on the Orient Express (all star cast, and great story).

Five films that I watch a lot or that mean something to me:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
My Fair Lady
Sleepless in Seattle (yeah, yeah, I'm a sucker for it)
Singing in the Rain (we apologise for the repitition)
Die Hard (I can watch it over and over again...)


Hah! Now to find new victims. Prey. Pray:
Crumpled
Boogerballs
Maverick
Cynic
Yesbob

Get cracking, people.

Book tag will follow shortly. And if you have comments about what movies you feel I must must must see, please write in!