Short stories?!

I saw this product displayed next to the checkout line at an office max. Judging from the photo on the cover i guess it is some sort of paper band on which an absentminded person jots down things she do not want to forget. The band is then worn around the wrist as a visual reminder. Apparently, people are much more amenable to walking around all day with silly pieces of paper around their wrists than i suspected.

I went to the Monteray Bay aquarium on new years eve last year to try and shoot photos of jelly fish. Unfortunately i was shooting with ISO 100 film and even though i was using a tripod the slides did not turn out well. The jelly fish that normally seem to move so slow were too fast for the film and light conditions. This photo from my camera phone turned out much better than any of the slides.

Jelly fish are so pretty to look at. I wished i could swim with them in their displays. There is a certain purposeful beauty to their slow furling and unfurling. I wonder why the term 'spineless' has such negative connotation in our culture when it enables such graceful motion.

A few months ago verybrightred and i went bowling at Cambrian bowl in San Jose. Next to the bowling alley, in the same strip mall, we found this nice radio controlled toy store. They had this large 70 foot race track in which people could race their small toy cars on tracks. Pretty cool. The people you see standing around the track are store employees that keep a sharp eyed lookout for misbehaving cars and set them right back on their tracks.

For a change cheeni and i went for a walk after lunch today. We came across this little "sex clinic" in the middle of residential Rajaji Nagar. I wonder how the people living next door to this clinic give directions to their homes. "Turn right at the erectile dysfunction clinic"?

When i first say this board i thought this place was, you know, one of them wierd ones that provided "treatment" for "ailments" like homosexuality and transgender urges. Now i am not so sure. They seem to be implying that they provide counselling. I guess counselling could mean anything.

I personally am interested in their vibrator therapy. And i wonder what penile doppler is. Do they clock your red shift while you whack off?

cheeni and i saw this weird maruti omni the other day on our way back from lunch. There parked on the curb was this mini van filled with books. Did not bother looking at the books because they were not my type.

Since then i have been noticing businesses running off the back of parked vans. Today, for example, i saw a van that sold packets of dried fruits and nuts and another that had a large tarpauline tent hanging off the back. The second van was a mobile restaurant serving piping hot food to people seated on molded plastic chairs in the tarpauline's shade.

Is this some kind of new trend?

This improvised street sign in rajajinagar left my hopes of proper spelling punctured.

There was a nice piece in the Bangalore Metro Plus section of The Hindu today titled 'Paens to the Songbird' about MS Subbalakshmi's concert in 1967 at the UN. The article had two interesting tidbits - MS had performed a composition in english (how i wish i can get ahold of it) and on the ghatam was a young "vikku" vinayakaram. You can see him at the bottom left of this photo.

That is my mom and dad doing the rituals for blessing the new apartment i bought in Mysore.

Only a few of the closer relatives made it to the puja. It was an oddly anachronistic affair. A sacred fire was started using kindlings and cow dung cakes. As the fire drew strength, mugfuls of ghee (clarified butter) was poured into it to chanting of ancient vedic hymns about bountiful harvests, a penful of nice sacred cows and the like. There was also pastoral goldments like a yoke as part of the puja.

I can see indians a couple of thousand years ago praying to the sun and fire gods with offerings of agricultural produce. I just dont see the relevance of these rituals in today's world. I have never eaten half the grains offered into the sacrificial fire. The damn thing left me and the apartment reeking of smoke.

cheeni fractured his thumb on friday. We were heading back from a great home-cooked lunch at iyer mess in malleshwaram and cheeni, behind the wheels of his maruti, was turning right into malleshwaram 5th cross in front of KC hospital. "Almost 34 years ago i was born in this hospital," I said dramatically entertaining the audience. cheeni spied a plastic bag he'd placed on the dash slipping and reached out to stop it from falling off. While his attention was diverted from the steering wheel the car decided to have an affair with the iron railings dividing the road. The stupid wheel stayed stuck to the "hard to port (or is it starboard) position". I heard a sickening scrunching noise and saw the front right fender of the car do a missionary on the railing.

If we were driving faster, i could have died, or worse, horribly injured, tens of feet from where i was born. Ashes to ashes, Malleshwaram to malleshwaram as they say.

Oddly, i did not feel any fright. If i had died on that spot, i would not have regretted any of my life - simply did not have the time to think about my life. I would not have mined it happening except for horrible pain from crushed bones and vital organs.

Cheeni and i (in the passenger seat) were in shock. His thumb was hurt and bleeding a bit. We decided to in into the hospital outside which this happened. We managed to locate the emergency room right beside, i kid you not, the leprosy clinic. After a merry go round of running around the doctors and administrators, we decided to go to a private clinic.

Those forms that you see on the right hand bottom are passport application forms on the magazine stand of Food World. Back in 1990 (has it been 15 years already?) i had to bribe a guy outside the passport office in madras to get a form. I had to doctor a bank passbook with a friends help to apply for my passport. Things certainly have changed since then.

I am in mysore with my parents. My dad, a lover of Indian Railways, has a fixation for those 'dingy railway retiring rooms'. He, quite old fashionedly, wrote a snail mail a month ago to the station master informing him of his arrival and requesting a retiring room be reserved in his name. My parents arrived yesterday morning and have been staying in a room on the first floor of the Mysore railway station. I arrived this afternoon.



These retiring rooms are distant echoes of the Raj. A long pillored oval shaped corridor runs around the building encircling the rooms. One enters the rooms through 15 feet talk doors. The ceiling soars at least 30 feet above the red oxide floor. The furnishings ooze British charm with musty blankets on a bed adorned with mosquito nets. There is an abandoned look to the place that brings to mind 'dhak' bungalows, pukka sahibs and 'shikars'. I can almost taste the quinine of the burra sahib's gin and tonic.



The place really is beautiful but has seen better days. And this is one of the better maintained ones. I wish the railways privatised these retiring rooms. A neemrana group would do wonders to this place. But, i guess privatisation brings the risk of a crass 'modern' and vehemently pedestrian outfit buying this place and bringing a multi-cuisine restaurant or some other such low brow monstrosity.



I guess the surly government conceirge that runs this place is easier to deal with than an obsequious owner of an eyesore.



(written on tuesday evening entirely on my mobile. Posted when gprs gets restored)

The pastry chefs at variar bakery in rajaji nagar kneading a tableful of dough for making some kind of baked bread. I think it is for bread. cheeni thinks it is for making buns.