Desi Spiderman and Other Links

So. After a hiatus of almost 5 years, I am back to writing. Starting with this blog, a couple of short stories, maybe a poem or two, and leading upto the elusive novel that I have been planning on writing since I first realised that words are simply wonderful things and can be used to create and share universes, emotions, people, lives...

So now that I have finally quit my job, (well alright that happened a YEAR back), have travelled as much as an unemployed person can afford to (more actually), and redefined laziness, I am finally working myself towards that novel. The problem is that this is not 2010, when I had a great idea that was dying to put itself onto paper, but no time. A little bit (too little) of that idea did make it out of me alive though, and can be found here. But I got busy being an overworked slave, and stopped seeing the funny side of life for a while. And that's how a missing sense of humour killed an unborn book (its very premise was looking at how utterly absurd the things most people take seriously are. Irony, anyone?)

In the meantime, the Indian publishing industry seems to be on steroids and everyone around me who happens to own a laptop seems to be popping out a book. There was a time when I could have told you the names of each of the 25 odd books in the Indian section of every bookstore in town. Today, that sad tiny little section dwarfs the international one, something that makes me immensely happy and scared in equal measure. As does being compared to Chetan Bhagat, but then the person who said that evidently meant as a compliment so...

Not that I don't have any ideas, I have about a billion. Just that none of them seem to be THE right one. Hell, I cannot even decide on the genre. I could do romance, sci-fi, chick lit and satire with equal enthusiasm. As a result, I have scoured the internet reading as many "how I came up with the idea for my first book"s as I can. Hasn't helped so far.

Maybe I should just go to bed and sleep on it.

More about how I became the undisputed champion of the "We Were So Lazy We Didn't Even Bother Naming This League" in my next post! If I get around to getting out of bed I suppose...

By the way, I love linking things while blogging. So I am gonna do some more of that HERE and Here and also There. Sorry, could NOT resist. But go ahead. The Indian Spiderman rocks!

Vicky Donor: A Review

No exotic locales. No stars. Not even an item number (unless you consider John Abraham's chest thumping over the end credits, which I didn't). And yet, Vicky Donor is a thorough paisa-vasool entertainer.

Is it a sweet love story within a wacky offbeat story about a sperm donor? Or visaversa? Either way, Vicky Donor works because it is a film with a wildly original idea treated just right, a bunch of excellent actors playing well written characters, and tons of heart. It is an engaging film about its primary audience: today's generation, their reality, greed, morals and convictions.

While it could easily have been a lewd slapstick, Vicky Donor goes the witty way. Somehow even the sperm-shaped accessories hanging in Dr Chaddha's car and office are not in-your-face cheap, just funny. The music is good, and the songs take the film forward.

Ayushman impresses by his sheer simplicity. He breezes through the film, evidently enjoying every minute, portraying each emotion with equal ease. Yami Gautam is equally wonderful, looks great and sounds even better, and I am sure we will be seeing a lot more of these two in the coming years. Annu Kapoor playing Dr Chaddha is spot on, at times annoyingly so.

But the real star of the show is the whisky drinking, perpetually hungover, LCD and Iphone lusting Punjabi Biji played by Kamlesh Gill. As Vicky says, there are only two things modern in Delhi: the Metro and Biji. She is a force to reckon with, and I would have loved this film for her alone.

As the Bengali girl and Punjabi boy meet, fall in love and get married, the film veers into much inter-caste hilarity (drunk Punjabi baraatis trying to get ululating Bengali aunties to do the "change the bulb" dance step!). It is only towards the last 40 minutes that the film seems to loose its grip on where it is going, and collapses in a haphazard tying-up-the-loose-ends mess. Perhaps a spot of better editing towards the end would have worked better. However this is entirely forgivable.

Vicky Donor is what I would literally call a surprise package! Go watch it!

On the richter scale

Dream chasing
Dawn breaking
Panes shaking
Knocking images out of my head

Earth tremble
Buildings fumble
Books photos vases tumble
Onto my head while I scream

All mindblowing
All fucked
Khallas
The end.

Of social networking and comicsense

Here is the deal. I am on Facebook. I am on Orkut. And thought I am inactive, if you search, you might just find me on HI5 and godknowswhereallelse.
Networking sites.
A great way to stay in the loop, figure out whats happening with my friends (most of them have moved out of the city/country), and maybe even get some office goss. Who knows, I might even land a job one day through the wonder of social networking. Who knows?
Uptil now, I am proud to say I have had the sense to ignore the creepy 'frandsip' requests. I would not get alone into an auto at 1 am in delhi. Similarly.

That said, for those in the dark, here is was in the news a few days back:

New Delhi: Adnan Patrawala the 16-year-old son, of a businessman, who was abducted on Saturday night, was found dead in Navi Mumbai on Monday.
Police investigations suggest that the plan to kidnap Adnan was hatched on Orkut, a social networking website.
While the police have arrested three of Adnan's friends - Sujith Nair (28), Ayush Bhat (19) and Himmesh Ambavat (18) – for murdering him, an Orkut profile under the name of Angel D in under police scanner.
Police sources say the trio, whom Adnan had met through Orkut, had promised to introduce him to Angel. But the question is who is Angel? As the hundreds of messages on Adnan's scrapbook suggest, Angel's profile could well be fake.

Wait a minute.WHAT??? Murder???? Its tragic, its insane, and frankly, its stupid. How dumb can you be, meeting people who befriended u on orkut??? But the fact is, people out there are not just meeting, they are dating and even -and this is a fact - getting married to people they met on Orkut. Huh? Did i miss something?

And all this while, far from here, somewhere in the 'land of the free', someone named Charlie was equally addicted. The man got a warning from boss as he was spending more than 4 HOURS each day logged on to Facebook. 4 whole hours. A day. His instantanious reaction? Logging on and posting the following :"I'd rather loose my job than my Facebook account."

When did we cross that line? When did our self worth diminish to the point we felt the need to measure it in orkut scraps and facebook pokes? What drove us to lay open our lives, sexual preferences, relationship status open for all the freaks in the Whole Wide World? When did our search for love/sex/'friendship' overcome our bloody common sense? When did we turn into unidimensinal words on some arbit web page?

I know there are creeps out there who check out the world's scrapbooks, maybe they get a vouyeristic thrill. The thing is, they end up getting a pretty accurate picture of this person's life. From who he/she is dating, what they did on their birthday, to occassional phone numbers and even addresses.

Suddenly, thats scary.

I checked out the hottie from work on orkut today. Wonder who checked me out.

espylacopa

Its about this planet I once saw
Burnt by its sun
Singed by its time
Eclipsed by its hatred

Drifting towards a doom that stinks of animal death
Inhuman destruction and ruins soot black
Peopled by a species that hates its own
Bent on destroying all that keeps it

Its rich dance around pyres of corpses
Its hungry feed on the blood of innocence
Its aging sell their memories of starry nights, peaches and poetry
Its children scream in their sleep each night
Its gods are dumped far away in the wilderness
Its angels die with clipped wings in their hands

Words are thrown around like dead insects
Words that turn the world on its axis
Words that burn its years and end its time
Words that end in bright white death light

Everything is burnt
Everything is broken
Everything is shattered glass
Everything is dead

Its about this planet I am stuck on
It is the past
It is about to happen
It is now where the two meet
And in the dead silence of this impending war
My people go and drop a bomb

By its cover?

Dig it??? http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jimthing/ has this and then some more that will just.. well.. blow your cover! (sad, i know...hmmmm)

3 am

The remains of the evening
slowly decomposing
Don’t feel so solid anymore
Curling up and dying
Made of sugar
Throw some water, see me melt
Become a puddle on the ground
That you can wipe away
Cant seem to think anymore
Every turn leads to a dead end
Wordless sleepless senseless
Living without the confines of reality
Unable to fight
Unable to give up
What started with a paperback original
Has now turned into a symphony
An obscure fresco
A photograph in black and white
A tattoo in the air.
Its over, yet
Cant seem to let you go

Jamais Vu

Blame love. Blame god. Blame luck. Blame death. Blame life. Blame the government. Blame Bollywood. Blame religion. Blame traffic jams. Blame the weather. Blame the shitheads you work with. Blame the shitheads you work for. Blame filmstars. Blame models. Blame the tax department. Blame the car you drive. Blame music lyrics. Blame the Cheshire cat. Blame greeting cards. Blame your mom in law. Blame your job. Blame the TV set. Blame mom. Blame dad. Blame the cleaner. Blame literary fuckheads. Blame politicians. Blame money. Blame college. Blame rockstars. Blame the handicapped. Blame that salesman. Blame Simon, Jim, Elvis. Blame the Beatles. Blame mobile phones. Blame the heat. Blame your highschool teacher. Blame the ring. Blame vodka. Blame Kafka. Blame August. Blame Valentines day. Blame time. Blame the mirror. Blame the aliens.
Blame myself.
Wikipedia: Jamais vu