I spent a lazy evening at Shilparamam yesterday along with some of the Hyderbad Photography Club members. This was my second visit to the place, the first being during the Rock Concert at Rock Heights a couple of weeks back. This time I got to see the real Shilparamam, as in the handicraft shops and the amphitheatre.

The place is beautiful and the weather happened to be great too. What’s more, it rained! Unfortunately, the rain interrupted the Karnatak Vocals recital by an elderly artist. I was just happy that I was there with the camera.

The little girl in the last pic is Aamani, daughter of one of the HPC members.

Music for the moment

There’s so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones - Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits

Sam Hormusji Framji “Sam Bahadur” Jamshedji Manekshaw MC

April 3, 1914 - June 27, 2008

This is Sam Manekshaw. Indian Army is in Bangladesh. Your Air force is destroyed. You are surrounded on all sides and if you don’t surrender, you all will be killed unmercifully.

]]> http://lazybug.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/rip-sam-bahadur/feed/ lazybug Sam Manekshaw http://lazybug.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/challaned/ http://lazybug.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/challaned/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:12:51 +0000 lazybug http://lazybug.wordpress.com/?p=330

“You’ve received a love letter from the traffic police”, said my mom just after I had finished my dinner. What could it possibly be, I wondered. Turned out to be a Challan for jumping a signal (as many as six months back). I was pleasantly surprised. First to note that this system of mailing challans was actually being implemented and next for me being challaned at all. You see, I am quite strict when it comes to following traffic rules, especially at the signals. So much so that I have managed to convert a few lazy bummers to appreciate the emotions of the much abused traffic lights of Hyderabad. The investigations that followed revealed that it could have been my dad who jumped the signal.

There was another surprise in store. The letter said that I could pay the amount online. So, I logged on to the eseva website. The website has all the qualities of being a government (read sloppy) website. Bad english (”Enter answer minimum four charecters” for answer to security question), unnecessary fields in forms (though Pre-filled, what’s the state name doing in the registration form?), no authentication of the data entered and so on. Anyway, I somehow managed to pay the amount thus sparing myself the effort of going to the Commissioner’s office.

In the end though, I was just glad that I had used a government serivice that works!

The Hyderabad Photography Club met at the Mrugavani Deer Park on Chilkur road today. It was a early start for me. Got up at 5.30 and left for Mehdipatnam, the meeting point, at 5.55. Reached there in 15 minutes flat.

We then headed for the park, in cars. The walk began at around 7.00. We were allowed inside the park since we were accompanying the members of Birdwatchers Society of Andhra Pradesh. It was quite scary. There we were, photography enthusiasts out to have some fun, being forced to remain calm and quiet. Them birdwatchers have some patience. We managed to spot a few birds…the oohs and aahs from the birdwatchers were quite amusing. After sticking around with them for a while, we promptly got lost. And, as a result, had quite a bit of fun.

Photography-wise though, it was not a very fruitful outing. Ended up taking macro pics of plants, shrubs, leaves and stones. We felt that the birds had gone to the city for some ‘humanwatching’ and the Deers were lazying around somewhere out of bounds. The only deer that did turn up was the one below. Posed very nicely for me…must be used to being photographed.

The following is a result of the never ending frustration of not being able to understand what the f*** the world (including me, of course) is up to.

Dear Creator,

Hope you are having a good time. I write to you in a rather disturbed state. The cause of my concern is my lack of understanding of your reasoning behind my creation. I know most of your creations have similar queries and must be keeping you busy with letters like these.

Assuming that their queries would be more or less similar, I’ll come down to that one grouse which I feel is unique to me. You created me to drive the body in which I reside. I hold the basic code of day-to-day activities and the ability to create intelligence. I work non-stop on the job. I relax for a second and the body would collapse like a broken toy.

To be very frank with you, I hate my existence. All the time I keep absorbing all sorts of data around me. Instead of looking at it as I see it though, I keep asking all sorts of questions. What was said? What was heard? What was seen? What was not seen? What was supposed to be said? Why was it said? What should be done next? Darn, the whats, whys, why nots and their likes keep torturing me. Yet, I am only too happy to do as they like. Self-control is something you did not think was needed by me.

And to top it all, you’ve created so many of the same kind–at last count we were about six billion of us. And we keep adding the number. We divided the one world you gave us into several tiny proportions. Nearly 200 of them. Me and my replicas are busy devising ways to benefit our own groups. That benefit mostly revolves around one of our most important inventions: money. We want more and more of it. And if making more money involves taking it away from someone else, we do so gladly. Selfishness comes naturally to us. We try all the tricks that we can create. Treachery, deceit, sweet talk, lies, theft and what not. The end matters. Not the means. And when so many of us try to do the same thing, you can only imagine what kind of a chaos would ensue. The world is now a mess. Thanks to your…err…mindless creativity.

We’ve also created our own ways of worshiping you. And the ones following the popular ways make sure that they take every chance they get to prove their way to be the best. You might say it’s just too many of us that’s causing the trouble. Not true. Even in tasks involving a maximum of two of us, we are perfectly capable of screwing up. Making friends, making enemies, finding love…you ask and it we can screw it. That said, there are some of us who indulge in the good deeds too. Helping others out, understanding and problems, education…so on and so forth. Unfortunately, the rotten ones far outnumber the good ones. And for this, the blame lies squarely on you. You devised no way of controlling the quality. The bad ones ought to go. But they stay…and flourish.

I hope sense dawns on you sooner than later and you do something about this situation which has already gone way out of control.

Till then, I hope to stay as calm as I possibly can.

Sincerely yours,

Human Mind

Lyrics for the moment

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave! - Eagels, Hotel California

It was a memorable weekend. Never ceases to surprise me how an unplanned weekend can turn out to be so good. There I was at my office, wondering what the hell to do with the day and a half of no work left. I wanted to go to the Pentagram and Parikrama concert desperately, but none of my usual metal-head companions were around. The spirits were down. But one man’s grief is another man’s inspiration. When I saw Santhosh in an even worse condition, my problem was solved. I dragged him out of the office and we bought the passes to the show. It was still four hours away, so we decided to do some time pass and headed over to Ashoka Metropolitan Mall after a salad at Subway (Corn and Peas Salad is back!).

The stay at the mall involved a 30-minute drooling session in the Apple iStore. I ogled at everything from the iPod shuffle to the Apple TV. Deprivation, thy name is Apple! After a coffee at Barista, we headed over to Rock Heights.

Once there, we waited patiently for the show to begin. We had to udergo a rather boring session by the forced-onto-us anchor, Mehar Bhasin. Things were looking up when Parikrama started their gig. A few initial hiccups occured and we were eager to see them get going. Alas, that never happened. The band has all sorts of problems with the sound systems. Too much bass, reduce the volume on the violin, stage speakers are too loud. And so it went on till the end. Except for a violin solo by Imran Khan and a song cover of LOTR, Parikrama were pale shadow of what I saw of them at the Iron Maiden concert last year.

Fortunately, their gig ended. We were just happy that it ended. No complaints!

And then came Pentagram. Vishal Dadlani and co. delivered a flawless performance. The guitar, the drums, the vocals…they were all mind blowing. The sounds were ringing in my head half-an-hour after the gig was over. I was looking around to their source only to realise they were emanating from the inside of my own head. Anyone could have mistaken me for being high on weed. But that’s the effect Pentagram had on me. Truly awesome.

The day next…

Sunday began on a lazy note. I got up at 10 and, without any food, headed over to Indira Park for the weekend photo shoot with the Hyderabad Photography Club. Some experience it was. The weather had been awesome throughout and it continued being that way.

Shot at Indira Park on Sunday, July 15 2008.

The smile just made my day.

More pics at my Flickr page.

A few days back I was invited by Career Economy to provide my views on the topic “Should we all be vegetarians?” This, as their mail said in no uncertain terms, was in “sincere praise for your [my] exemplary expertise on the topic”. My reply, or more aptly a rant, was as follows:

No one can decide for everyone. Whether one chooses to be a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian (or a bit of both) is purely a personal choice. Neither a spouse, family, state or religion have the right to impose upon an individual their will in this regard. Unfortunately that’s not what happens. But that’s a different topic altogether.

It is a well known fact that both Veg and Non-veg food have their benefits for the human health. My question to the supporters of vegetarianism then is, on what basis has it been concluded that Veg food is better than Non-veg?

In India, religion and caste play a key role when it comes to the food one is allowed to eat. Hindus are considered to be largely vegetarian. But there are castes that eat Non-veg. Brahmins have to stay away from meat. The ‘lower-castes’ need not. Then there are the Bengalis, who, irrespective of their position in the caste-based hierarchy are ‘certified’ to eat fish. Might one ask on what basis were these rules put in place? May be if a convincing answer came by, one could argue that religion and caste are the right criteria for deciding what food one eats. One will have to curse his / her destiny then for not being able to eat the food of one’s choice. Till then, however, individuals should be allowed to choose what they eat.

OK. May be I degressd a bit by bringing in religion, but then I had to make my point. What you say?

It was a gray day today. Started-off with me and Santhosh sharing gray matter with colleagues about websites and stuff. Then we headed over to Crosswords to buy book. More gray matter to add to the brain. This was followed by a search for a ash-gray shade jeans that I had been looking for over a year now. Found it at last. But perhaps the gray-est moment of the day came when I was returning home at around 5.00 PM.

The location: NTR marg by the Tank Bund (Hussain Sagar).

The scene: Clouds had gathered over the city. The sky went gray. The lake looked so gray and so clear, I’ve never seen it like that before. The footpath was unusually clean. The other end of the lake was visible quite clearly too. The trees were swinging in the wind. I stopped by at a spot just before the foot-over bridge, with trees on either side of me, just to gaze at the scene created by nature itself. I soaked the scene in and moved on.

The tragedy: I was not carrying my camera. The charger had gone kaput last weekend and is yet to come back from repair.

The positive: Who needs a camera to store such a beautiful scene? It’s etched in my mind. Every pixel of it. Something similar had happened back in 2006 when I travelled to Solapur. And that’s exactly how I consoled myself.

Sigh…such is life.

I want to read a book. A really good one.

I want to live alone. By myself.

I want to be able to play the Guitar. Just like that.

I want to set the world right. The way I want it.

I want to kill the constantly nagging side of me. Get some peace.

I want to write. Each and every thought.

I want to dance my ass off. Drop dead.

I want to go away. Never come back.

Is it so difficult? Really?