On Bollywood

My relationship with Bollywood's been fairly interesting, I think. 

When I was growing up, Bollywood consisted of this blur of imagery and drama that would happen for a few hours in a week, maybe a Friday evening movie or a bunch of songs in Eastmancolor on a flickering, crackling, bulbous little CRT... but most of all, it was music. Music everywhere, on taxi cassette players, mikes on the corner, brassy, disjointed bands, and everywhere, radio. Single-channel MW bands on battery-powered transistors sitting in faraway corners, singing away in the background. Somehow, always associated with travelling, with holidays and memories, the comfort food of music. 

It's probably the nostalgia factor, but I guess also because I was most of the time too young to really get what was happening. 

Then sometime around Chunky Pandey, I got old enough to understand the stories... and hated them. And the music - however good it might be - was forever tainted from then on with shallow, selfish, misogynistic, boorish, and embarrassing behavior. 

But all that had come before - I think it's pretty much set the tone for what music should be, as far as I'm concerned. There has to be melody. Imagery. Erudition. The ability to paint a lifetime in a few charcoal strokes, just abstract enough to let you fill in the blanks with what you wanted the story to be. Soothing. Distantly on the edge of hearing, yet constantly there. Familiar enough so you can sing along. 

You don't know who's singing, who's composing, who did the music or what film it's from. It's like reading a comic from the middle of a series you found in a box of junk on a vacation afternoon when you had nothing to do. You don't know why they're singing. You don't have any visuals to go with them. 

All you know is - this is awesome. 

And I guess that's why there's always going to be that genre that exists only in my head - the soundtrack to those drives in the dark, the walks in dusty golden winter sunlight, browsing through second-hand bookstores... and sometime between KL Saigal and Baba Sehgal, a little golden RD-Rafi period that's can only be labelled 'the most awesome childhood ever'. 

climatic catastrophe

Me:

there are cold cold breezes

my spine, it simply freezes

the chill, it just not eases

while this daikin zephyr teases
the ac does what it pleases
my fingertips wrinkle into creases

my each and every breath seizes

with coughs, and colds, and wheezes

Praddy:

and i am sitting in absolute humid climate

no power in office
I need excuses to not cut you in to pieces and feed you to the fishes

product life cycle like never before

Today, dear pagecount contributor, let me tell you about my washing machine.

My washing machine suffers from habitual and copious incontinence.

My washing machine groans like a ghoul at odd intervals.

My washing machine cannot take water on it's own, and needs to be put on a separate hose like an IV drip for every wash.

Because of this, it needs constant watching and supervision to make sure the pipe doesn't fall out and sprays water all over my comp. My washing machine, perversely, will start it's wash cycle exactly when I step out of the room in nicotine-starved frustration, with a flatulent rumble followed by a merry splish-splash, causing me to twitch violently at a crucial juncture while leaning sideways over the gas (since the matches are soaked) and singeing my eyebrows.

My washing machine needs a special support stand in order to be moved around, to be able to reach the bathroom drain.

My washing machine displays all the vibrancy of an epileptic seizure in the spin cycle. A vibrancy that knocks it off its castors and upon my unsuspecting feet, whilst partly-spin-dried clothing flies about in wild abandon.

My washing machine is an old, old man, on it's deathbed.

Had it owned large property, or even a hall-kitchen south of Boriviali, I would have been standing over it with will and pen and large, comforting smile.

"If you hate your washing machine so much," asked HR, who was just recently introduced to the joys of new-ownerhood of a brand-new IFB, "why don't you just buy a new one?"

A new machine, it is true, would be young, vibrant, and eager to please with a hint of smug superiority, like an MBA with 1 year's work ex. It will, like Sharman Joshi in Metro, take away all my troubles and resolve them. It may not get me laid as well in the bargain, but with the kind of tech Siemens is putting in it's machines these days, you never know.

But the truth is - I like this one. It's more paisa-vasool entertainment than a Mithun-da film festival. Washing day is lookied forward to with dread, trepidation, and a fluttering int he stomach weeks in advance. Jeans are re-re-re-used until they're insufferably obscenely filthy, and therefore last decades. Office shirts are guarded like Kohinoor diamonds to avoid the slightest speck of dirt. Underclothing contributes to many new species for alien scientists to discover and theorize about the evolution and origin thereof, billions of years from now, by creating independent, individual biospheres. Curtains become bulletproof with mold, mildew and dust, and that too at no extra cost. Enough electricity is saved to power rural Maharashtra for at least a week, which is why I was able to watch DishTV at the end of the Lohagadh trek while savoring a nice hot chai and ciggie out of the pouring rain.

So, such is my life and that of my washing machine.

Even talking about it makes me feel clean.

Is it not the most amazing machine you've seen?

It's lean, mean, and even ecologically green.

Other machines, they look obscene,

When compared. Wah. What a scene!

PJ

When I was coming back from the office to Dadar today, the cabbie charged me ninteen rupees. I immediately thought of my friend Unny. When Unny returns to his home town, he'll start his own business. And he'll call it Unny's.

What business? Obviously, manufacture of honey. And the enterprise will be blessed with the moniker - Unny's Bees.

But in today's world, simply the product is not good enough. It needs to be marketed with a little... flourish. And Unny will use, as his trademark, Love as the USP of the honey, and his business will come to be known as - Unny's Bees + Ek Kiss.

Then, as the business flourishes, Unny will realize that he needs to diversify and branch out. So he will also open a domestic help referral agency as a division of the main business.

Thus will end the story of how there will be, one day in a town in India, a company called...

Unny's Bees + Ek Kiss, and Bais.

---

Update: Soon after, Unny's parents, who stay with him, encourage him to accept into the family an aged friend of theirs. Unny, the essential entrepreneur, goes a step further and opens for her, an old-age home for ladies that she can manage, called Tai's.
With the money now flowing in like crazy, a professional finance manager is needed. Unny hires his childhood friend, Mr. V. Choubey, who combines his investment-advice firm with Unny's business, a company called Choubey's.
Thanks Praveen for the contribution!

Unny now is the master of Unny's Bees + Ek Kiss and Bais, Tai's, and Choubey's. The name is too big to fit on his visiting card, so he combines the five things into a single group called Paanch Cheez.

His success inspires his neighbor, a Korean gentleman, Mr. James Cha, to go into business himself. Unfortunately, he chooses a field which brings him into direct competition with Unny, when he puts up a board bearing the legend - Cha Bees.

yet another obsession

Seeing another pattern here... started with Resident Evil and Apocalypse, then Edgar Wright's Shaun & Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, then back the the original master George Romero's Land of the Dead on Sunday, and now back to back Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead (original 1978 version, in German)
Apart from Night of the Living Dead, which I still haven't acquired, there's just Russo's Living Dead series left to watch... and oh yes, I almost forgot, I still have to watch Evil Dead and Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness which is sitting somewhere on my HDD.

I remember I did this with books, going through three or four a day when I really got into the mood... movies is something new, though. Call it an unhealthy reaction to unlimited download capabilities. Like net porn, in a way...

Interestingly enough, there've been no nightmares, not even the fun zombie-mod in FPS types which I usually immensely enjoy...

and in the meantime,