The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I am not talking about the epic movie here.

Oh I missed one major level here : "Mediocre".

That's how I end up classifying things I can do or not do in my head.

Good keeps having occasional entries and just as they are about to make me smile and sometimes foolishly trying to move to the imaginary "Superb" level, but then they change their mind, and decide to return to mediocre. Bad and Ugly have entries that I would like to push to mediocre, but they refuse to budge. And just when I am about to give up on them, they give me a glimmer of hope. But the major irritants are "Mediocre". If bad and Ugly is like the scolding you get from your parents, Mediocre is their cold stare. Mediocre causes the heart pangs that just don't go away. And what's worse is, you can't even explain it to anyone else. It's easier to admit you are bad at something. What follows is even worse. You fear that it will move to bad, and that fear makes it impossible for it to reach the Good.

Every now and then, I resolve not to start picturing these buckets. It works for some time, and then the self-expectations and assessments are back. Whoever said Introspection is good, must have had a very high opinion of himself/herself. Else, he/she would never have advocated it to others.

What are my "Good, mediocre, bad and Ugly"? Today's a bad day to write about them. I will probably write about it when Good has some visitors.

Leap to the New Year

2 hours more and it would be new year. Mostly at the end of every year, one gets a feeling that the year just swooshed by. But somehow for this year I am getting mixed feelings regarding that. The newspapers are talking about the glories of India this year ( quite a rare phenomenon this year) and first one on the list is course the World Cup victory. But somehow it feels as if it happened long long time back. May be overdose of cricket is the reason for it. On the other hand, while looking at the recent pics of one of my cousin's baby, I was quite surprised to see that the baby is almost a year old now.
Today, being a relaxed Saturday, while surfing through the TV channels, I was annoyed to find all "End of the World" movies playing in the afternoon. And it didn't quite strike me, till I stopped by one of the channels and checked out the movie name. It was "2012". Oh...That's the reason. TV channels seem to have taken the responsibility to prepare us for the Apocalypse. May be we will soon start having drills on the lines of Fire drills, but hopefully people will take it more seriously than Fire drills.
Anyways, I think I have completed my quota of babbling on this blog this year. So it's 11 posts for 2011. Hope I do better than what the series suggests :)

Alice in Wonderland

Before you read further let me warn you that people staying in the close vicinity of trees and flowers and blah blah blah should probably skip this blog. I would not want you all to waste your precious 5-10 min and end up shrugging your shoulders and giving a “Big Deal” cry at the end of it. But the nature lovers feeling like misfits in the concrete jungle may choose to go on. Anyways, I guess enough of the disclaimer.

On the busiest roads, with sparse greenery and suffocating pollution I got the first pleasant surprise of the day. Fluttering in a random motion was a beautiful yellow butterfly looking truly lost (or so I thought). There was not a shrub to hide or flower to rest on, so it decided to ride a nearby autorickshaw briefly. Of course it did not opt for the usual riding seats. And just like that it was lost in the commotion. My bus chugged ahead, but my thoughts still dwelled on the strange visitor. The polluted stretch was followed by not so polluted stretch. And there amongst the potted plants of a roadside building, another specimen of this lovely species greeted me. But this one was brownish in colour, designs if any were not that identifiable. I couldn’t believe my luck. Two butterflies in a day? Could there be more? I was on high alert now. I looked at every stretch of grass or shrubs that had grown. Somebody twittered recently about the incessant rains in Mumbai, “If nobody lived here, it would probably be a thick jungle”. So true. Isolated plants seemed to have sprouted at quite a few places. Shrubs left to survive along the divider on the highway were swaying in the slight breeze. And there I spotted a black one with yellow dots on it hopping towards the shelter.

I probably would have ended up seeing more but I was close to my destination. With the almost concluded rains, I am sure to catch some more visitors to this wonderland : "You are more than welcome, dear."

as you're there for me too...

It was already late by the time I reached office. The mailbox showed many unread mails from the client which indicated loads of upcoming work. It was going to be a looooooooooong day just like the day before and day before that. On any normal day, I would have been flustered and irritated and would probably have given a “Why, God Why” cry sometimes in my head and sometimes aloud. But today was different. I was still smiling. And so it continued throughout the day. It was as if I had a Felix Felicis to drink. Twinkling eyes, shared laughter and uncountable memories stayed with me throughout the day . I had just met my closest and oldest friend after a gap of four years.

She has been my friends for ten years now. Yes, it may not seem so old to other people. People have friends from the time they were in school. Unfortunately having been in multiple schools I don’t have such friends. In this gap of four years, we didn’t talk every now and then. Even the mails were once in a while. Technology has its limitations. You can’t say everything you want to unless the person is right in front of you. She missed my marriage and I missed hers.

Even now it seemed very unlikely that we would meet. But finally, overcoming all odds, we were there, sitting opposite each other in a restaurant, the way we had done so many no. of times during the college days. We both had so much of catching up to do. During the phone calls generally the milestones get shared but not the journey. Its only after talking to her I realised that I had missed this total frankness for quite some time now. The interruptions by the waiter who had mistakenly thought that we had come for a quick breakfast was a constant reminder that we had limited time. Anyways I don’t think any amount of time would have been sufficient enough. But even this small dose of Luck lasted me the day. Hope it lasted for you too, my friend.

Mightier than Sword?

Last used it for – making a ‘To do’ list. Even that was almost two weeks back. I look through the fat notebook lying on my desk. Only ten pages filled. Its use has reached an abysmal level for me. I look through my purse and surprisingly find 4 of them. And all of them working!!!

Feeling pleased, I open the notebook. The first page is blank. And like a school child, I enter my most prized possession on right hand corner--- My name. It is said that whenever testing out a new pen, most people will write their name.

It ‘s almost end of the day and there is no need to make a To do list. So what can I use it for? Well…I could write a blog post using it. My head starts to work feverishly : I will write my latest post on piece of paper in my ‘beautiful’ handwriting, scan it and post it. What a novel idea !!! I try searching for a blank piece of paper. After a lot of searching, I finally find one with one side printed. Doable, I say to myself.

Then why isn’t it here? Why this typed post in the same old font and format and the weird simple present tense (which I realized just now).

Well…I lied about my handwriting. As I started writing slowly and even carefully, after almost a paragraph, I looked back and realized that my ‘n’ s were indistinguishable from ‘u’s and ‘r’ was readable only due to the context. The sentences were slanting towards top right. And font size had gone from 12 to 8.

So I give up. However great my love for the pen may be, my thoughts cannot be ‘penned’.

As for the simple present tense, don't really know why...it is just how it played in my head as I tried to capture the flow of events.

Big Canvas

I looked out of the window to see darkness all around. It wasn't even 5p.m yet. As I moved out of the building I tried to see how far the darkness spread. And the view was just out of this world. Clouds hung so low that I felt if I could just pull a string attached to them, they may just touch the ground. My words can't do justice to the hues of grey, blue and black and white interspersed in a manner only an artiste can accomplish. For a second, I felt that after looking at the picturesque sky, when I look ahead to what is around me, I would not see the concrete buildings or cemented roads. But they were still there. The disconnect was imminent and unnerving.
I kept looking up so that the imprint would stay with me forever. And I guess it has.

Hopping Lamp

I hate it when my mother comments, " You are watching cartoon?" And not that I don't like Cartoons, but because it is so much more than that,I end up defending it, "It's Animation". If you were to see my list of all time favorites and most re-watched movies, animation films would probably top my list.
So no wonder when I was trying to choose a movie on Netflix yesterday, Toy Story-3 was the obvious choice. And then I saw something else that caught my attention : The Pixar Story, Documentary on Pixar Corporation. Any animation movie buff, would be aware of them. I think it was Bug's Life that first made me Google them. This one and a half hour documentary takes you through the rise of this extra ordinarily creative company and the people behind it. I had known that Steve Jobs had acquired this company early on, but I was oblivious to the real team behind it.
Most inspiring was John Lasseter, the creative head of Pixar. From traditional 2D animation at Disney, to experimentation at George Lucas Studios and finally making of Toy Story, first feature film made entirely with CGI. What impressed me the most, was their focus on technology only as a tool for telling story in as real form as possible, instead of creating stories to show off technology. The characters and scenes that seem so simple, like the colorful under-water world in Finding Nemo or the nearly microscopic life of Ants and Bugs are actually the biggest challenges. Getting the right look for Human hair , when it is wet vs. when it is blowing in the wind, it is these details that make the movie.
Thinking of inanimate objects having feelings had always fascinated me and these people were bringing this imagination to life. After 10 min of Wall-E you don't think of it as just a machine. The Hopping Luxo Lamp, their Logo completely reflects this DNA.
To see the sketch of Mike from Monsters' Inc on paper to him singing on screen, it is no less than magic.
My blogs generally don't have any pictures. But for this I nearly thought that I could sketch my favorite characters and post it on the blog. Just kidding, magic can't happen, at least in this area :)
Just a snippet here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUuwOl8CZw4&feature=related