as the swine flew...

i know, and accept, that the title has been inspired by a very very pj... the one where one lady says "oh! this bird flu!" and another replies, "Oh! don't most of them fly!"

anyways, as my classmate says, most of those diseases abt which we used to hear, when we wr back home, are getting closer to us now that v are in delhi! the dengue, chikun guniya, malaria, the swine flu. btech and mtech students over here have exchange programmes and it's arnd this time that they return from their internships abroad, from hongkong, singapore, Europe and the US. and two of my collegemates have been diagnosed with the swine flu, leading to some extraordinary actions being taken in the insti.

it includes a directive by the director with instructions including a ban on hugging and kissing socially. socially? so u can do it personally? wow! tat wud b cool, had i had someone to do it wid. jus joking!

yet another part of the directive wants the students to eat only the healthy and nutritious hostel food. have been searching for it since the directive has been put up, and am really hungry now!

another notice put up near the hostel water cooler proclaims the ban on using drinking water for other purposes, in order to prevent swine flu from spreading. now, tat's interesting. hw does washing your face with drinking water help in spreading swine flu? mus ve some reason to it, this insti is known for its logic. but this one totally escapes my brains!

enough said, but am really scared. scared to cough. scared to sneeze. n scared of being infected by h1n1. hope it bypasses me!

p.s.: Overheard in the mess: "X came from Shanghai. Hope he doesn't have the flu."
"Naa! He returned from china, yaar. the viruses have a low quality there!"

revival of a golden age?

this blog is in partial fulfilment of a promise made to someone close to my heart. I had promised that someone a long time back that i wud blog soon after returning from a visit to central UP as a part of my internship, nearly 2 weeks ago. now is that 'soon after'. and this, as that person said, can be attributed to writers' block, being at a loss for words and more importantly, sheer laziness. those who know me, will understand.

it is, i think, a revival of the golden age for malayalam movies. the last few months, mallu movies i've seen have been remarkably 'not that bad' and some, even good! shaking off its obsession with 'westernized' (read tamil-like or bollywood like) music n romance, and coming back to a brush wid simple realities of life, and actors becoming more like human beings than superheros (leave the actual superstars), malayalam movie scene is breaking out from a jinx. many movies have left a nice feeling these days. i don't remember all of them, but some are arabikkatha, thirakkatha, makante achhan, passenger and even 2 harihar nagar. unlike the situation 2 or 3 years ago, you don't feel sad that you've watched a movie. so much so that passenger reminded me remotedly (I'm not speaking of acting) of Vellanakalude Naadu. blame me for that, if you want to, but i liked that movie. and it is the fact that I watched that movie in a cinema next door to my house. a cinema theatre that shut its shutters down 5-6 years ago after years of showing b-class and soft porn movies. now an AC theatre with DTS. back in action, and that too with good movies.

maybe I'm being overly optimistic. but when a theatre coming out of a shutdown can afford to play movies like passenger, one can be optimistic. maybe something like (i won't say exactly like) the golden age is coming back.

awaiting the monsoon

i wake up. it's raining. the view outside the window is lit by sodium vapour lamps. the laptop's still playing pink floyd. i reach up and shut it down. i look outside the window of my room in delhi. i can see the rain, hear the rain falling on the leaves. the trees lining the avenue cast long shadows in the yellow light. across the trees i can see the b and d blocks of- wait! am I back in GEC thrissur?

i open my eyes to realize that i'm lying in that usual pool of sweat in my room in delhi. gosh! i dream of rain now! outside the window, during daytime, i can see the wall of the campus and houses beyond that. it's pitch dark now. the fan makes a lotta noise to prove that it's working. honestly, it's a lot better with the fan than without.

monsoon's on its way, proclaims the newspaper. 10 days, 1 week, midweek, 2 days... phew... i'm tired of waiting for the monsoon. and i hope, it will be a good heavy one when it comes. India's planning to start cloud-seeding next year onwards, so hope it won't be this long a wait for the rain then.

Ideal Indian Movie

There's a ban on smoking and drinking on screen. Now, Mr. Azad, according to today's newspaper reports, wants to ban rape, murder and dacoity on screen. Soon, there will be a list of things that movies can't have, such as:

• Shouting
• Abusing
• Kidnapping
• Money laundering
• Bhaiyya cheating bhaiyya (a recurring theme in hindi movies of a certain age)
• Gender discrimination (like calling "oye chokri" and "launde!")
• Bar dances and item numbers
• Seduction
• Love before marriage
• Children disobeying parents (it sets a bad impression on the upcoming generation, man!)
• Eloping
• Mobile phones (since they are banned in schools, they should also be banned in movies).
  

It should show:

• a hardworking hero, either a doctor, a lawyer, a CA, an engineer or a business consultant;
• a heroine, who does pooja every day in the morning and in the evening, or spends a lot of time reading the Quran or visiting Harmandir Sahib every other shot;
• a heroine's elder brother smarter than the hero, who calmly advices (or gives a presentation) to the hero on why the hero shouldn't keep following the heroine;
• the hero and the heroine decides not to meet each other until parents agree to their meeting (already came up in a coupla movies, but this has to be a routine, man. it's time to cultivate behaviour through movies!); and
• finally the parents of hero and heroine agrees to their marriage. Any pregnancy later on should be attributed to birds or bees.
  

Oh wow! then it would appear like a perfect family movie, Karan Johar style sans the gay overtones of course... And in the beginning, as a forward, there should be a scene shot, maybe, in heaven, in which the parents of the hero and the heroine would have decided that they are made for each other. and no more "Let's go party tonight!"

it would be better for govt of India itself to write the script for, direct and release all movies by iteslf. i mean, there's got to be a limit! this is going to be termed "propaganda" or "mass media infiltration" soon. I'm not sure where all this will lead to.

beginning of masochism?

after hovering at around 45 degrees for the last three days, Delhi has almost succeeded in convincing me that i've got used to it, n will get to enjoy this soon. in a short while, i'll start enjoying burning myself, cutting off my limbs, crushing my feet and so on!

i don't consider that a great achievement of mine, but the thought just turned up in my mind as i walked back from lunch today. and since twitter is blocked in office, i had to make this post on blogger! i know this is too short a blogpost, but i can't help it...

summer....

i come into consciousness everyday at 6. i kept wondering y for many days y i kept on waking up then. all of a sudden it hit me (Not exactly hit, jus grazed past me) that it ws my roomie's alarm that woke me up! anyways, i go back to sleep almost instantly after that, to be waken up by my alarm at 7. i snooze once, and then wake up by 7.05.

in between getting ready, i get online, check mails, read headlines. then have breakfast from mess and leave by 8.10-15. and after crossing a t-junction clogged by a flyover under construction, i reach IIT Hostel bus stop on Africa Avenue and board the 8.25 blueline bus no. 615.

and then, once that reaches Indian Oil Bhavan bus stop on the Janpath, I get down, all my senses numbed. sun-screen lotion on face, sun-glasses on eyes, HitFM roaring in my ears and often sipping a coke, i walk the Indira Chowk, cross Kasturba Gandhi Marg and reach Barakhamba road. i'm doing my summer internship in one of the thousands of offices in one of the dozens of huge buildings there. then it will be around 9.15.

don't force me to say what i'll be doing till 18.30. then i cross the Barakhamba road, walk the connaught lane and reach Kasturba Gandhi road bus stop from where i get the return 615. by 7.30, invariably, i'm at hostel. then what? nothing much. life goes on.

summer's burning thoughts

the heat is back. delhi is back to burning hot, and yes, i know, this is just the beginning. it can get only worse, and i'm happily stuck somewhere around for at least next two months! my internship might require me to visit remote parts of central UP, which was out of even my remotest dreams. well, things happening these days have been out of my remotest fantasies, so am not actually surprised.

this might look like a random entry written out of nowhere, and it is, indeed, one of those. i couldn't just stand the thought that i hadn't blogged for this long, so thought something is better than nothing. i don't want any comments on this one thought.

the semester is coming to an end, leaving me halfway thru my mba with one more year to go. every1's busy doing termpapers for 6 different subjects. they are supposed to be actual industry examples and cases, but anyone can suppose anything. suppose it is snowing outside. even that.

i miss winter, as i was sure i would. home is a distant prospect, the way things are going. and there is no internet in the hostel these last few days, after ppl tried out tv on LAN. thanx, guys, tech-experimenters. now am sitting in my department, ac is making a lot of noise, and am sweating. got to drink lotsa water, but there's a water shortage! i'm just loving it, n thank circumstances for givin me a chance to experience these while i'm ready to take them up. more challenges? send them to me, i'm ready for all of them! i guess that's the best thing wen u r 22. u r ready for (almost) everythin!

i guess i've done justice to my great urge to blog, so am signin off. i know the post was no good. good posts require a bit of thinking, some planning, at least for a minute. i don't feel lik thinking, don't feel lik plannin. so tat's it.