The Daily Alien#2

Bus rides terrify me, among other things I always have a feeling of riding on thin air especially after my exposure to the magnificent feats that my college bus performs; I would have been a happy and innocent audience to this specific spectacle only if I were not to be involved in it.

Usually they pass without any special moment, the same road-less path and the usual bit of gibberish one tends to overhear during these uninspiring travels. For a person who knows me in and out will recognize the in-born arrogance and intolerance involved in writing this piece. Traveling to college is like fighting in a hand to hand combat with German soldiers in the grip of world war two. We are not directly involved but still it’s a war.

Sometimes I wonder why should I travel this far for my studies; both of them provide me with very little to think about or to even know about, so I come up with this ingenious plan which might change the course of my life forever- reading.

Reading till date provides the only interest for me to attend this college of mine and of course there are other things like looking around, which proved futile. Reading still remains, as I sink into the brilliant characterizations by these great authors who have kept me company all through from K.K.Nagar to Saileonagar.(even though both of them are nagars they are as far as the sun and planet X)

It also serves as the perfect conversation stopper, nobody bothers the reading boy! And I do not wish to indulge in some of the most irritating and boring conversations at least not at this time of my life, I do not also wish to say that I am more wise than the chaps having conversation about the love life of an actress right in the morning (though it may be a very interesting topic later in the evening; nevertheless it is tiring to listen or contribute to film gossip).

Or it is the academics to which I have no clue or the inclination to discuss z-transformations in the rickety old bus of ours.

I came to conclusion that either it was not deserving to have a conversation or am not fit enough to fit into other people’s conversational places, maybe I was just a hot headed idiot I don’t care. Books provide the best distraction and I imagine all these scenes come alive, this is such a gift you can never get out from socializing; personally these are things that make reading so enjoyable. The other day I had the whole of shire before my eyes and the next day it was the old forest and the next it was an alleyway in busy Manhattan or the comfort of grandma’s lap in Malgudi, I could bring it all back to SaileoNagar.

Where would I search for amusement without all these people?

Not Saileonagar for sure

Satyeki

IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN

Somebody with a microphone echoed that ‘today is august 15, the Independence Day and if it is august 15 it is the landmark quiz’ this I thought was one of the most apt statements of the evening along with all the other good things

August 15 has always been a bright and good memory in my life at least I could say that confidently for the past four years, the day had me attending one of the greatest quizzes in the country-The Landmark Open quiz this time brought to us by Sony Play station.

And the best place such an event can happen is the Music Academy, Madras.

Quizzing as we all know (or those who are closely associated with it might) has actively existed amidst all other things and open quizzes are a major draw in the city and this time was no exception. Personally for me Quizzing has been that outlet which has given me something serious to work about and contributing to the fun part as well. It’s not as if you feel bad after losing a quiz, in a quiz that never matters although you would want to with that entire prize at stake. Participation itself is a major achievement and a good memory which I will treasure and narrate to my children or to those of my neighbor (in the case of me not getting married). You always learn something from a quiz, or to put in better terms you, are a quiz older than the previous one, each contributing towards what people have always believed: in knowing.

My humble opinion being that this is one of the best activities to have invented by that brain of man- making knowing interesting, philosophy apart the afternoon saw us taking a forty question prelims (no I wouldn’t tell you our score, but one of the best prelims in recent times) compiled by the beloved quiz-master Dr. Navin Jaykumar and Gautam Padmanabhan. These people have been doing the quiz for the past fifteen years which is an achievement onto itself.

Eight behemoth teams made it to the city finals (we had a national finals this year!!!) competing against each other for the top two spot as questions ranged from geography to IT all engaging in their own way brought to us by Dr. Navin in the best of his wit, QED (V.V.Ramanan,Samanth,Jayakanthan) the city favorites and super quizzers clinched the city title while the team Singh may be king but Iyer is higher(yes, this one them the best team name prize, a first of it’s kind in landmark history) made up by Vinod Ganesh, Ramkumar and Krishnamurthy came second after a series of great and seriously funny answers. The city finals also saw teams from Bangalore take part.

This year Landmark (the city’s most visited and loved bookstore) decided to take the already successful Landmark Open Quiz national, so they call up the other state finalists to have one of the most (searching for words, but settles for excited) exciting finals ever put together, the winners from Pune and Banagalore joined the top two from Chennai, QED took the earlier lead but were closely followed by the team comprising of S.P.Rajan, Swami and Gopal who were the Bangalore winners.

It would be a great gesture if I could put up the questions but this is not a quiz blog and I chose not to.

The winners weren’t decided until the last round as QED battled to gain glory but only to come second after some (again searching for words, settle for brilliance) brilliant answers by Swami which made the national winners. Singh may be king…came a good third. Overall a great evening and much was learnt, I hope Landmark Open Quiz continues forever and kudos to the winners. Thank you Landmark for yet another (searching for words yet again, part of brain suggest that I read a good dictionary for adjectives) great day.

Satyeki

THE LAZEROIDS FROM OUTER SPACE

Into the darkness of the expanding universe, the man stared as he watched the numerous funny looking things go by, back at home their were called flying saucers owing to their resemblance of the insignificant things which humans place below their tea/coffee cups but this was the last thing that would come to the stagnant brain of the man.

He had already seen too much and was willing to return to planet Geo (once called Earth but then when the neo-humans found the name too unfashionable they decided to call Earth just Geo a relatively simpler name and could be well related to by each and every one of the planet. The other suggested name was- the foster planet of Superman, which was rejected at the international convention of the Earth Renaming Commission on the basis that the chairman of the committee was dead against comic books and believed that if something could inhabit the earth it would only be the foolish humans, later he was killed in the middle of metropolis square by an unknown man in a red cape and blue underwear. The case was never solved.

As I said he had seen enough already to think about any other thing as he saw these peaceful things pass by in complete silence beautiful creatures as these were in the feminine color of pink as they moved smoothly over the limitless universe.

They were simply called the things in pink to avoid confusion, for the interested reader these were the fat bottomed pink Lazeroids as listed in the Universe Gazette, peaceful things which once in a while came to planet to Geo for their annual fest called the fat bottomed fest.

They did find it funny that humans still didn’t believe in extra-Geo creatures, for they had lived in and out of Geo for years and years as they could trace back in their notebooks of history, Old Duncan the second, as expected a pink Lazeroid fell in love with planet Geo (when it was still called earth) and wanted to stay the rest of his lifetime on the green planet, the humans didn’t know a thing; he became one of them that even became the deputy president of a super power and married a super model twice and had eighteen children from marriage or otherwise. This might sound like some fairy tale possibly it is, but mind you it might be true , our whole conception of what we know best is about change.

The man still watched as the Lazeroids made their way into Geo’s centimeter thick atmosphere (the scientists still publicized that they had very little of the atmosphere left and that was why they were still living, meanwhile millions of galaxies away things had grown by eating plastic and red rocks and had never bother about the thing which we call air)

One of the Lazeroids, finally looked at the man, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, he wondered if it was from the opposite sex meaning a woman, but the Lazeroid were far more complex than the neo-humans in gender issues, you could never guess the state of a Lazeroid unless you had read “the big book of Lazeroids and allied races far from the prying eyes of satellites”. The book however was no longer available.

It looked at him (it because we don’t know for sure) and asked “Could you guide us to the Empire state building please?”

The man swallowed and said in a tone which could only be heard by the meekest of rodents on planet Geo.

“Um..yes..ok”

Satyeki

The above article was written when the author was still in good mental and physical health (though his doctor still debates the condition of his patient, the author himself is quite confident of his sanity)

THE BORING SUNDAY

Sunday always begins with Saturday, I mean if you could consider that as an intellectual statement but then it is true in my case. Today, the day being Sunday began with Saturday with a good natured friend of mine calling in the dead of the night to know about my status whether I would attend a newly released movie on the following morning.

It’s been a quality of mine to pick wrong things, right from childhood as I recount many instances of my stupidity which continue to even today including the above mentioned day.

The movie of course was the Mummy 3: the tomb of the dragon emperor, one of the questions I ask myself after I come out of the plush theatre on Radhakrishnan Road, is money the only target in making sequels?

The answer is yes as I found out after small amounts of time say dt. The Mummy series have never inspired me, of for that matter I don’t think it has made of much of an impact on any of the movie going audiences say for except the Rachael Weiz loving public or those interested in cheap thrills (pardon me if you place Mummy along with The Return of the King on your top 10 movies list, this review is not for you)

The movie begins with Emperor Han (Jet Li, wasted) searching for the thing all foolish villains have been doing in our movies since the movies were born- the search for immortality and so he asks his general Ming and a witch who proves to be immortal (Michelle Yeoh) to help in his quest, when he does achieve it, he kills his general and wants the witch but then she curses her to turn to funny looking terracotta for the next 2000 years until our man Brendon Fraser who is by now retired and tired than the prequels is ultimately tired of his retirement and his (really boring son Luke Ford ) who drops out of college to become something of an archaeologist in china where he knows more than his scheming professor(more boring stuff ), he ultimately does what everyone in the audience know he will do –find the tomb of the boring emperor who comes to life with the help of a eggish-thing called stone or whatever of Shangri-la (the pass is portrayed as a small heaven on earth)

Family meets son and to be girl-friend, car chase, fireworks, machine guns, terracotta horses coming to life and breathing fire, Jet Li shouting most of the time, more gun shots, a couple of yeti’s who act as railway porters, rehash sequences of lord of the rings, one old couple kissing, dead people rising, more shouting, movie ends happily mummy goes into sand.

Extensively concentrating on China, personally feel that movie was made to promote the Olympics which again is boring, why does director Rob Cohen want to make such a boring movie I wonder.

The Verdict: watch it only if you want to relax and not concentrate on what is running on the screens, go on enjoy the push-back chairs and butter popcorn, you would be surprised that you never missed a thing.

Satyeki

INTO THE NIGHT, WITH THE ICE-CREAM

I have just found out that whenever I begin writing, it usually begins with the word ‘It’, I do not assume to have a soft corner for the word but reading through all the unwanted things I have written till now usually begin with it, for example ‘it was unlike every other unlike day’ or ‘it is not everyday you wake up and say in a loud voice ‘Welcome to the Borneo International Airport’

Such was the case when I ditched the word for good and have made a positive start towards myself thereby stating the English equivalent I.

Being positive really matters take for instance the numerous film publicity function that I force my family to watch in the middle of an ongoing feud, comes up the director “This is a different movie with an X-feel to it also encompassing the Y elements along with the unusual fights at the local harbor, three songs shot in the highest of the mountains found in South America, in fact our crew is the first in the world to have shot in locations like Nauru, Seirra Leone and other forgettable locations in Africa and the south east which are not even found on the Unbelievable guide to Unbelievable world , nevertheless we have also incorporated the mother-sentiment along with all this” this is what I would call positive attitude or should I say height of it, suddenly from somewhere the microphone would find it’s way to the heroine who would look pale as was the case with most heroine who thought it is quite fashionable to look pale and say “I play a bubbly character in this movie and this whole set was like my family we had a ball…” can someone explain to me what in the world bubbly is? It’s been the most used word according to the Debutante’s Guide to the ever evolving World of Bullshit Cinema.

Totally giving up on what would other normal human beings call ‘world friendship day’ , I sat down to watch what would be one of the most memorable moments of the life I have yet lived. Annie Hall, undoubtedly the most thought invoking seriously funny movie by the New York loving genius Woody Allen, if someone asks me (which I am sure no sane person who stands in the really red hot sun before a poster shadowed theatre to buy first day tickets for ‘Kuselan’ would do) on what movie should I watch to get a taste of what life really is. But then leave it, everybody have the right to have their own opinion and I am not here to force myself onto any person

Moving on after a good one hour of the movie and for the fact that I had been let alone for the day and that goddess Earth couldn’t provide me with natural food, I churned up a plan to all up everyone I knew for dinner, as all man-made plans this one too failed.

As usual I was left to myself singing 80’s hits to myself in a loud voice so that I could convince myself that I could to a mutilated Xerox copy version of SPB’s ‘Idhu oru pon maalai pozhudu’

I walked, to the nearest of a popular multi chain restaurant and was involved in one of the boring activities called eating, it’s really a sin to eat alone, a sleazy news article on how a particular actress had caught herself in the web of revealing videos caught both my eyes and my hands followed in quick succession what was next to follow were a few fun filled minutes at the local new agency, I was still alone and nothing to do and the whole of night before me, and then God said “Have an ice-cream”, I obeyed to the voice without further question on what flavor it should be, the vendor already knew chocolate.

Satisfaction, the ice cream kept me company on the return journey, it has been the most interesting thing that has kept me company, all through the walk it said nothing when I asked about how you feel when you melt, poor thing.

But then we all melt, at some point of time, I am just trying to be ‘the dejected poet’ in suggesting such things but then ‘the dejected poet who writes about the hope to come’ image doesn’t suit me one bit. ‘The failed comic having a second helping’ would describe me perfect.

There is still to come, I am waiting with the ice-cream into the night.

Satyeki