PS: The concept of the post’s flow has been borrowed from my friend, this should settle the plagiarism case later!

Catching the crazy flight

The basics: Catch the SpiceJet flight SG 226 of 10:25AM from Hyderabad to reach Delhi by 12:25PM on a sunny yet breezy Friday of November.

Friday 9:02AM: I can see the airport pick up bus of 9 AM taking a U turn about 100mts away from me and then speeding away in the glory of sun, my heart beat has already risen to 120 beats per second (bps), my auto driver’s heart beat has just moved an inch to 78bps.

Friday 9:04AM: I reach the boarding point and ask when the next bus is. “10AM”, comes the terse reply. It doesn’t take a Bill Gates to calculate that the next bus is useless for me (bus journey time – 55mins).

Thursday 11:05PM: I decide to pack my bag for the trip next day. A little calculation and I decide to take the 9AM airport pick up bus, and leave home at 8:40AM. The pick up point is about 2+kms from home, to be filled by auto travel.

Thursday 11:50PM: I manage to end the call made by my mother to make sure I have put all the necessary items, I tell her that am yet to move an inch over there as she points out the things which need to go in my luggage. Screen says “Call duration 00:42:35″

Friday 01:45AM: I pull the zipper of the bag and sleepily set the alarm for 7:00AM in my mobile handset. Mobile prompts me to set the date and time; I ignore that and go to sleep.

Thursday 5:00PM: I change the SIM in my mobile and start it. It asks me to set the date and time, I cancel it.

Friday 8:10AM: My roomie is tapping on my shoulder shouting, “Jassi wake up! You will miss your flight!” Startled I look at my mobile, it is not showing the time, I go to Alarm menu and it asks me to set the date and time. I dump it and run for washroom.

Friday 8:40AM: I reach the main road, and hunt for an auto. I get one and he charges Rs.50 (for 2+kms), I grunt and put my bag in there and ask him to start.

Friday 8:44AM: A little further we find ourselves into a traffic jam; you can find such a jam on this road once about in a six months. I pass a louder grunt and look at my wrist to check the time. I have forgotten my watch. I take my mobile out, it doesn’t show any time or date.

Friday 9:05 AM: With my bus having gone in front of my eyes, I ask a guy at pick up point if he can arrange a taxi cab? He looks at me empathizing and tells that the cab will take 20 mins to reach us here. I ask him the time and set the time in my mobile, it now shows the date and time. The auto driver holding the Rs.50 note I have given him. My heart beat is 137bps and auto driver is at 97bps.

Friday 9:07AM: A cab company tells me that there is no free driver near me and it will take them half an hour to reach me. Auto driver is still looking at me, he says he can drop me if I can give him Rs.450; am cribbing that amount is too high as auto starts for the airport.

Friday 9:37AM: We are struck in another traffic jam, am being convinced by driver that it is just a small one and that he will get me there by 10AM flat. Estimated time to Airport: 23mins, estimated distance to airport: 9+kms.

Friday 9:57AM: I can see airport road, its race against time now; zero margin for error, 100% margin for miracle. I call my sister if she can get me checked in via web; she checks website and tells me I need to web check-in at least 2 hours prior to departure. My heart beat is 130bps, auto driver is at 120bps and my sis is doing somewhere above 145bps.

Friday 10:10AM: The departure terminal is at first floor and a long arc of road will take us there, I can see the departure terminal clearly with everything else blurred, its still 350mts away from us. A constable stops us, saying the auto can not go further. I use all my salesman ship, push my auto guy to pitch for me, show him my flight tickets. “Sorry Sir, I will lose my job if I allow you.” He points me to a nearby bus which is supposed to take me to the departure terminal in another 2 min. I settle the bill with auto guy and run for the bus.

Last week: I have been down with undiagnosed fever for over two weeks. Doctor has made me take tests for Malaria, Dengue, Chikungunya, Hepatitis, Typhoid and multiple samples of blood, and he is till unclear.

Thursday 6:20PM: Doc advises me to get hospitalized and be under constant care. My joints are already aching like hell and it has become difficult for me to even walk. Doc tells me with smile that if I get hospitalized all my bills will get reimbursed and it will be cashless admission. I smell commerce and call my parents who order me to come ASAP to home.

Friday 10:12AM: I push hard to walk fast to reach the bus as my joints cry foul. Bus is filled with passengers but not the driver. I scan the periphery and can see long line of Mahindra Logan taxi’s of Meru. I ask the guy if he will drop me on departure terminal up 350m for Rs.50. He looks and me says he can do so for Rs.100. I grunt as the cab race on the arc.

Friday 10:17AM: I thrust hundred rupee note on the guy and race for the entry, get through the initial pass and bang on the SpiceJet counter. The guy’s name plate reads ‘Sikandar’; I plead customized pleas to Sikandar and put on counter all the doc prescriptions.

Friday 10:28AM: He prints my boarding pass and tells me flight is late by few minutes and asks me to rush through the security check. I thank him profusely and tell him that I will always remember this favor (it’s been a year now, and yes I still remember his name!)

Friday 10:40AM: I call my sis to let her know I made it. My heart beat – 72bpm, my sis at 78bpm and average hear beat at that moment on earth – 80bpm

Friday 11:15AM: Flight attendant says we can use our laptops and non interfering electronic devices. I put on earphones and turn on my Sony Walkman MP3. Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics “Mama am coming home” fill my ears.

For WP Geeks: Where all complex ways of copying database, creating new installation, dropping tables from new database and inserting old tables in it left me with a scratched down versions of my blogs but still with issues, a simple reinstall on same location and updation of wp-config file made the day (night infact, its 1:02AM right now!) for me.

Well, all is well that ends well. So I will look forward to be in touch with you again through this channel.

Aloha!

~Jas

Cinemax, 10:45PM show and am still feeling as fresh as 5AM breeze in forest on banks of a river in mountains. Credit goes to Karan Johar, for a change. Wake Up Sid is as refreshing as a lemonade and as cool as a cucumber. The story is very well 21st century and urban without ever getting ’sexy’ or ‘adult’ as Yash Raj’s films. I could not help to notice the similarities in performance and music style with Lakshya movie (whose first half is very very fresh and crisp and similar).

When at 8:30PM today my friend told me that he was going for a movie, I had no idea what was there in store, and movie came out to be ‘Wake up Sid’. We left by 9:20 as packed my stuff from Gym, throwing myself in his car with my backpack still on. We raced through the troughs and crests of Banjara Hills Road no.36 to hit Cinemax looking for food inside cafeteria there. A little good news after months and months of gloomy news had me perked up already for the night. Ladies in the eatery there looked finely dressed and two faces just caught my attention for such cute were they! Wearing IIM Indore shirt gifted to me by my friend I sat down with my friend once we got the pranthas we had ordered. Just then I hear a feminine voice address me asking if I was from Indore. I take a look and there stands one of those pretty faces; Boy! she was beautiful! As I clarified that I was from FMS Delhi and the shirt was from my friend only. the simple nods of the glowing face just made the day/night. Human, aren’t we!

The opening shot of the mobie looks so similar to our story, trying to read night out, trying till an hour or two, then hit for food/laptop/net etc and spend crucial 2 hours there, coming back to study at 3/4AM and deciding its better to sleep and study tomorrow. When the results would come, we would decide that next time onwards we will study on regular basis from very start, but then that day never does come and plans are made, scrapped and sublimed.

I really liked acting of Ranbir, it made the evident harsh truths so easy to come out. And the credit here goes to debutant director, Ayan Mukerji. There’s a subtlety with which he repairs the relationship between Sid and his mother (Supriya Pathak). The distance between the two is born out of the different cultures the two belong to. She is uneducated, he is westernised and the twain don’t meet. There’s a grave dimension to the Punjabi mother who tries to speak English with her son, even though it is pretty awful, hoping that it will make her a friend of him as his other friends whom he talk to in English. It’s grave because we know it’s so real, we see it all around us.

Even when Sid ruffles up Ayesha’s place and when she is upset for a reason, it does not get melodramatic, as she doesn’t intend to make him feel guilt from inside, as melodramatic women would do. Instead it is as smooth and plain as a chocolate bar. And Sid’s animated T shirts with perky colors pep the screen up.

Neatly lensed, the movie looks at Mumbai — with love and affection. The picturisation is very vivid and colorful. The painting of Ayesha’s home, the interiors of Mumbai magazine the leads are working for and the  colorful paintings of areas around Ayesha’s home add an array of colors to the story. Amit Trivedi’s Iktara, a song filled with an unbearable lightness of being, keeps the promise made from songs of Dev D. Songs make the movie soar; they help us look inside the head and mood of Sid and Aisha and help carry the story forward.

Actually, Wake Up Sid is a slice of life film. It’s not merely real in concept, but has also been told most realistically, so much so that you can’t help but draw parallels with your own life or with someone you know. There are so many things I have done myself which Sid does, so once the movie ended there was a lightness in the mind and a big smile on the face. While we moved to go back from the cinema (it was already 1:30AM), I wondered if I will again find those Indore people! As my friend went to loo, I just stood near stairs lost in self. After some time I just turned around and saw the Pretty Face. As the I started walking slowly towards their group, the sweet music filled the mind inside me. Just when I was going to approach them, a voice says “Lets go”. It was my friend who had come back from loo, suddenly the music stops, and I look between the two and know what needs to be done. Still next moment I am stepping down the stairs, walking back to his car with mixed emotions. Still appreciating the freshness of the movie, we cozied ourselves in the car, as the speaker stared blurting out the appealing title song of Wake up Sid. It was time to wake up, go home and sleep.

Note: Some truths have been dramatized for intended hue.

“This is a belief deeply rooted in Indian society. Couples are willing to do anything to ensure that the baby is not born on that day,”  Shivani Sachdev Gour, a gynecologist at the Fortis Hospital in New Delhi, told AFP  .

Some astrologers even warned of impending terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and civil wars too. Many also took a dip in holy rivers to cleanse themselves after the eclipse and some avoid cooking and eating during the eclipse.

But do not think this superstition thing is limited to India only, its everywhere. Lets see why people thought earlier that we have eclipses, as per mythology.

PAST

India – In Hindu mythology, Rahu is a snake that swallows the sun or the moon causing eclipses. He is depicted in art as a dragon with no body riding a chariot drawn by eight black horses. The rahu kala is considered inauspicious.

In China, it is believed that the dragon swallows the sun during eclipse. So they would beat drums to produce great noise and commotion to frighten away the dragon while, the Japanese would cover the wells so that the demons in the cover of darkness during the eclipse would not drop poison into them.

In Romania people believed that werewolves and demons ate up the sun during the eclipse. To frighten them away they would light up huge fires and ring church bells would be rung throughout the eclipse.

Tahiti believed that Sun and Moon were in love with each other but still could not be together as they used to fight a lot. So once in a while they meet each other and make love, which causes eclipse.

At a time of a solar or lunar eclipse, there is a recommended prayer (salatul-kusuf) that is performed by the Muslim community in congregation.

Present

Knowledge has changed things now, though it has not eradicated them all. The new age of informed people are more keen to witness the historic event, and accept it as just another celestial event as Leonid showers, Jupiter hole, Mars and Venus appearance. Here are some pics where you can religious faith people enjoying the event.

Sadhus, or Hindu holy men, watch the solar eclipse through specially-designed viewing glasses in Allahabad, India.

Devotees observe a solar eclipse as they take holy dips in the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Sarawati River in Allahabad.

Photos courtesy – http://ibnlive.in.com/photogallery/1448-2.html

The show was performed by newly floated Hot Shoe Entertainment Company, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the legendary Greek fable-based musical Mamma Mia. The show is a veritable treat for Abba fans who slip into nostalgia, courtesy pop favorites like Waterloo, Dancing Queen, Money money money and a whole range of ABBA hits. The energy and enthusiasm with which the crew performed, showed they haven’t taken audience gratis a bit. You could see the enjoyment on the faces of crew members as they danced away the play and showered the euphoria, being part of it. The very face of the lead lady here (on the right) who played Sophie, the bride, says it all! Am impressed beyond limits young lady, hats off to your enjoyment of the career, for many lesser and higher mortals miss it. The way she could dance, act and sing at same time, reminded me of a friend from Nagpur who has similar skills.

And to make sure the energy gets siphoned in the audience too, crew invited audience too to be the part of the all time famous Mamma Mia song, which saw about 50 people taking stage and stairs to join the troupe in singing and dancing on the song. As Jeffrey Vardon, co-producer and choreographer, put it this evening – “Mamma Mia has history of running house full and still having 50% of seats vacant as public could not keep their feet from dancing along!“

For those who do not know about ABBA, they were the legendary group of Pop culture of 70s. Mamma Mia just collected their songs and threaded a musical play around it, tweaking the songs a bit. Over here the troupe has made sure the dresses and play’s flow matches the actual movie. The songs, which are sung live by the way, captured that charisma of ABBA. The lady who plays Donna (mother) also happens to be single mother in real life. I must admit I was lucky that I had not seen the original so could take a fresh look at the performance, rather than compare it all the while.

After the play ended on lines of original musical, the two producers came on stage to give a damn neat performance dripping with elegance and panache. The control that beautiful Varalaxmi Sarathkumar showed here, stamped her élan over the final sequence. (see below)

Another thing that happened was that I could not convince any friend of mine to shell Rs.770 for a musical play, so I was left all alone over there (with other families, essentially two fat ladies  in post 50s to accompany me on either side!) to savor the performance. And do I regret it? No way! Maybe one of the best Sundays I have spent in Hyderabad!

Psst.. next performance of the crew is in Banglore, then Mumbai before they leave for Dubai and Colombo.

Lately some of my plugins have stopped upgrading themselves, so I got the hint – I need to upgrade to latest  version of Wordpress!

Am planning to install the new version today night IST. So the personal blog will not be available from 23:00 IST Jul 19th to 02:00 IST Jul 20th.

Thanks for the readership!

Update (01:00 IST) : The blog has been successfully updated!

Such a mentally gripping and vivid capture of surrealism can only come out of European mind, so it is no surprise to know the movie is directed by a French director Michel Gondry. The film uses elements of science fiction and neosurrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love.

Story
Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and the emotionally dysfunctional, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) meet each other for the first time at a beach in Montauk, New York, and subsequently become romantically involved. However, they fall out of love with each other. Clementine discovers the services of Lacuna, Inc., a firm that is able to erase all specific memories from her mind (of Joel). Joel cames to know about this and himself opts to have his mind wiped of all memory of Clementine too.

During the process Joel realizes that his memories of Clementine are being erased in reverse order. As he experiences in his mind the earlier, happier times with her, he realizes that he wants to stop the procedure and keep the memories of Clementine. He begins to fight the mind wipe by trying to hide Clementine in the deeper memories of his mind but realizes that he is not able stop the mind wipe. Before his last memory of Clementine at the Montauk beach house, on the day they first met is erased, she tells him she loves him and says “meet me in Montauk.”

Joel wakes up the next day, decides to skip work, and goes to Montauk where he meets Clementine (who is now a stranger). Unaware of whom each other is, they quickly bond and begin to form a new relationship. After returning to the city, Joel drives Clementine to her home where Clementine finds her Lacuna file in the mail and plays the tape from it for her and Joel. Clementine travels to Joel’s apartment. She finds Joel with his own Lacuna tape and holding a drawing from their former relationship that was missed out when he handed over his possessions to Lacuna. They both become aware of their former relationship, and that it had flaws. The two recognize that their previous relationship may had problems based on their past relationships with other people, but decide not to let those failings prevent them from seeing each other… and trying again. The movie ends with them in a teasing snowball fight on the Montauk beach.

Personal Rant
We all have the memories that we will like to just forget; they say that it takes for wounds of hurt to heal and I would point that the yes the time would heal, but how much time is what we decide on our own and that is the main thing. Some people takes few days and others few years. We never forget our first love and for people from advanced culture – our first parents! Blessed are those who found spouses in their first love but others go through hell. Then there are people who have an embarrassing experience which they would just like to forget while others have trauma to be forgotten.

US researchers said in 2008 that they were able to selectively erase memories from mice in a laboratory, raising hopes human memory afflictions like post-traumatic stress syndrome can one day be cured. But then how many of us who would wish for these memories being deleted, be actually ready for deletion? These memories may be tough on heart but then they are lined with something we always cherish deep within. Yes, it is for the people who have suffered greater at the wrong hands, not for those who suffered at the right hands, for we the latter, shall keep and protect these memories deep within for ever.

I remember reading a blog post of my blogger friend, Sara. Her husband had once marked her blogging as a hobby as she blogged during her free time only and she retorted, “NO!!- I think blogging is not something you can do when you find time. It is compulsive, it can be so dominating and demanding!! You get some idea in your head and your fingers start itching to type in-spare time or not, you have to do it.
It keeps on gnawing at you from within.
And its like a heavy rock you carry on yourselves and keep feeling the weight of it, unless its typed in and posted on the blog.”

I agree. Once we start sharing our thoughts via blog, it takes on from just a casual writing to an effort of a worthy reading (may not be true for all!). So I told my director that if he realised, most of the posts were done late in night or had many drafts before they could see the light of the server just because I would be too tired to complete it!

Personally, blogging keeps me alive. I need to breathe my thoughts, if my work gets monotonous then the urge heightens. We all are in a rat race and something that makes us a worthy in own eyes is very vital, and that is where my expressions come. I do not write the blog posts to get advertisement money (there aren’t ads anyway on blog as of now!), so expression becomes paramount.

Simply put, there are things which we need to do and there are things which we want to do. The second one can fuel the first and first one can kill the second. The level of compromise is the only thing that we decide over here.

One morning of Nov 2008, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

As they replied affirmative, the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. Her vision has started going blurry now, making it hard for her to read.

Atifa Ali, 20, left, Shamsia Husseini, 17, center, and Fatima Sakhi, 19

You may discount it off as an one off incident, after all Taliban and and other fundamentalists are making news for all wrong reasons daily. But let me bring more knowledge on latest events to your indifference. At least 98 people from an Afghan girls school were admitted to a hospital on Tuesday (yesterday) for headaches and vomiting in the third such episode in three weeks, officials and doctors said. Officials are suspecting gas poisoning.

Students were lining up outside their school in northeastern Afghanistan when one girl collapsed, said the school’s principal, Mossena, who was herself in a hospital bed gasping for breath as she described the event. She said a strange odor had filled the schoolyard. Then other girls started passing out. Ms. Mossena said she did not know what happened next because she collapsed and woke up in the main hospital in Muhmud Raqi, the capital of Kapisa Province, which lies just northeast of Kabul. The episode was the third in three weeks in which girls became sickened at school by what the authorities described as a gas cloud. A similar event took place late last month also in Parwan, when dozens of girls were hospitalized after being sickened by what Afghan officials said were strong fumes or a possible poison gas cloud.

Local mosques are splashed with posters shouting “Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School”.

There was an ancient crime called Sati earlier in our customs of ancient India. This is a bigger crime as Sati was done under a belief, which itself was barbaric and savage. But such incidents are done under hatred and need for a male dominance sparked by the jealousy. This is worst! I do not believe in judgment day, but I hope it comes for these rotten souls where they get damned and anathemized to suffering themselves equivalent to what they have caused to every single human ever.

The impostors of God/Allah should see themselves to understand their own mentally ill psyche. One who can not value a lady as a mother, sister or a daughter; who can damn her to burqa to hide her body and face and then rape them throwing off the same burqas, who beat their own women and lecher around at the sight of other women, who teach the others the Allah/God’s way of living and then filth around in liquor and opium wilting the same lives of Allah/God’s children, who talk of eroding the other reliogions than theirs, but promises to leave if given money/Zazia, blackmailing their own self… this ONE is surely one of the worst social bastard of our time.

What answer do we give to them?

“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Her mother, who like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write says, “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.” And I can not agree any more with her.

I do not know what Islam Taliban is teaching, what Hinduism these Sena people are preaching and what sikkhism the ‘Babbar Khalsa’ was teaching. Any teaching where a person hurts some one else, where a decision of one is imposed on other is a stinking fake teaching.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/world/asia/13school.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?_r=1

The video is of Susan Boyle singing ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ song from Les Miserables,  the longest-running West End musical in history. Based on a french novel by same name, this musical, set in early 19th-century France, follows the intertwining stories of a cast of characters as they struggle for redemption and revolution.

The video has become a rage it seems on YouTube, because the lady who comes to sing it gives a background about herself first to public in the famous ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ show. Picture this, an old English lady from a village down Brighton (it is more rural than any other place near London), 47 years old as per her claim, comes on stage and is sneered at contemptuously by two of the three judges and many among crowd. But the moment she starts singing, the very first few words evoke a strong turbulence in the very folks. Singing at the age of 47, these lyrics do grab a lot more gravity (check the lyrics at the end of the post).

I have already put in almost four years of my life in work and almost all of rest in studies, and dreams have been the oxygen for me. But lately I have started having other thoughts, of leaving the control to the Almighty and take retirement from dreaming. Somehow it seems the more you try to control the things, the more awful you feel when things just do not move in positive direction. So the lyrics left a very intense impact on me, leaving me hold a Requiem for the Dreams I dreamed of changing the world as per my wishes!

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high,
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used,
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hopes apart
As they turn your dreams to shame.

But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seems
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

Youtube link for the old village lady who has taken the Web2.0 by storm!