The Deep Cut

Its about time I get on with compiling this year's list of the 'Naughty and Nice', shouldn't I? Sit back, relax and get a box of tissue, just in case! Put in the music player, that mix-tape you made for that girl you knew, a long time ago. Oh but then you did't keep it anymore, thinking you'd move on.. so let me suggest a song instead. Its Christmas. So I'll only be adding to that yuletide mood.  'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' in the baritone voice of Johnny Cash sounds like a good one to start on. I had spent my New Year's Eve on train (celebrating the last day of the year without much celebration has thus become a habit) from Kolkata to Mumbai. The next six month would pass among people I had only just met, and them being amazing, was a welcome surprise. I indulged in the first bit of serious research work (something I'm going to ignore for your sake) there at IIT Bombay, and loved the flexibility in the timings I work to accomplish my

It was a long time ago when Kolkata was called Calcutta and Ballygunge was, well.. the posh neighbourhood as it still is. Being a posh neighbourhood, it used to be ridden with lazy police sergeants in the deserted afternoons, strolling occaisonally in the neighbourhood for the sake of security. This is a story of one such ambitious and veteran police sergeant and his crossing ways with my distantly related grandpa. There Will Be Blood. ... On his way to the office, like everyday, he takes his son to the Ballygunge High School. All his son's classes being in the day shift, it is almost noon by the time his classes start and he has his daily cigarette at the makeshift paan shop at the corner of the street. As an old habit, he would then laze around on the promenade till he finishes his smoke. Few walks down the street, there is an alley where seemingly the entire dirt of the city is dumped and people pee on the very sign that says "Do Not Urinate On The Wall&qu

If you turn on the television now, you'll find that nearly all the major Indian news channels are doing exactly the same thing. They're using all the powers of Microsoft Powerpoint that Bill Gates could muster, to broadcast a multitude of animated texts reading 'BREAKING NEWS' on every available space they could compromise on our television screens. I wonder what Amanpour and Lucy Hockings would think if they look at the contemporary standards of Indian news broadcasts. 'Let the classiness waft over me for a few minutes.' But anyhow, it gets the job done and we needn't always be followers of how the West sees of the world, do we? It is a different thing that I feel they do a more classier job than us but then again, who am I to voice such opinions?

With his retirement, it almost feels as if our favorite childhood memories are being yanked away from us. The fact doesn't sink in yet, even though we witnessed the God of cricket getting emotional yesterday. As he has always been in his career that lasted almost a quarter of a century, Sachin Tendulkar was honest and moving even in his farewell address . Just two months past my birth, Sachin Tendulkar made his debut in international cricket. So in a way, I'm one of those blessed millions who grew up watching his cricket. I wasn't too conscious to notice the number of matches that took him to score his first century, but I do remember the times thereafter when they had become a habit. It is hard to comprehend without tears in my eyes that he won't be playing for India - for it's people, for us - no more. For me, it is like one of the few remaining connections to our childhood is being forcefully withdrawn. Withdrawn into the annals of the history books. Immort

Director's Cut MK Raghavendra HarperCollins 320 Pages | Rs. 399 To be honest, however great a cinephile that I claim to be, I have read very few books or essays on cinema in India before now. Admittedly, I would consider the online reviews of popular film critics, such as Anupama Chopra and Rajeev Masand, before planning a movie outing with friends and family. But lately, not always would their views cohere with mine. It is at this juncture that I come across M.K. Raghavendra's Director's Cut - 50 Major Filmmakers of the Modern Era, published by the  HarperCollins. The author is well known among Indian film critics, and is known primarily for his scholarship and expertise. In this book, he handpicks fifty of the most revered film directors of the post-1960s world cinema and attempts to study their craft from different point of views. Political implications, social realism and even the director's mental attitude towards his work, among many. The author s

The first door-bell of the day had rung almost two hours earlier than usual that morning. It was still night-time, with the sun yet to rise at the horizon. My mother, still in her sleep, had opened the door to our cautious looking milkman. Upon being inquired as to why he had been so early today, he gave a single, crisp and wholesome response. 'Unhone Rajiv Gandhi ko maar dala..' They have killed Rajiv Gandhi.

I've always believed in a particularly enigmatic method of time-travel. And before you abjure this piece of information raising doubts on it's credibility, I'd put forward another claim. That you'll believe me when I explain. Smell. Indoor smell, to be specific. "Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived." - Helen Keller I've always had an intensified sense of smell. When I was little, I would go about taking everything in with my nose in a dilettantish manner. Little did I know that a long time after that, those scents would come back stalking, haunting and frequenting their way into emotions every unwary moment of reminiscence. I could smell interesting odours, uplifting aromas and soothing fragrances from miles away, but I could never smell trouble that was but only two inches away from my face! My earliest memories of scent is one of the most common memories for all. Its th

I have traversed the seven continents and have crossed seven seas to find the truth behind why most of the perfect women in Kolkata date almost all the wrong kind of men in this city. Why the smart and beautiful Bengali girls are going out with the slimy haired, cigarette smoking, sling-bag flaunting 'Ekta chumu dao na, shonamuni?'-waale Bengali boys. And as you would have it, I have emerged enlightened in this quest. All I needed was to travel by a mini-bus from the archaic Howrah station to the upscale Park Street on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. After seeing off my uncle, aunt and my cutest, youngest cousin at the Howrah station, I got on the relatively empty bus and found myself a place in the second last seating by the window. Before the bus could find a way out through the routinely heavy traffic that follows once you get on the Howrah bridge, I found the entire bus filled. Including of course, the seat behind me, where sat a relatively young man in his early twenti

In the past few years, I have adopted academia as the way of living. And subsequently have I been clarified on a large number of presumptions regarding science and the people who practice it as a religion. For example, I had always thought that the people of science were a binary lot! The Yes-and-No kind of people. A chemist would pose wearing an apron, holding beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks in his hands, while a physicist would beat his head at the chalkboard that is repleted with complex equations of quantum mechanics. A biologist would be dissecting a lab-rat for nothing while a computer person would spend sleepless nights sitting in front of the glowing screen, punching codes and high on caffeine. That is the general image we have in our heads, right? But in the past few years, I have been let in on a secret, 'Things are not exactly that simple dummy!' And as we progress into the future with towering banners of discovery, invention and innovation, all the fields a

Now that I'm into a writing halt for quite a while, I am actually reading and not skimming through every other blog, selected at random. This is me, figuring out how even the most elite class of bloggers get out of a writer's block. And I think I'm finally getting the answer. Either I should devote myself into writing about cellphones and apps and tablets and throw big words like 'SEO' and 'Microblogosphere' here and there. Or, I could write romantic poems that don't rhyme. Instead of ending each paragraph with 'the touch of his lips' type phrases, I end up with a 'the smell of his underarms' kind lines. And then I met the third kind. Movie reviews! ... Although frequently referred to as a dependable movie connoisseur, (within some secret underground niche) I have been deprived of a movie-watching experience of any kind after that of Kai Po Che . It was all about All Work and No Play making me a douche-bag  Thanks to a c

Second day in the new neighborhood, and my mum and dad still don't think it's safe for me to be let out on my own. Pity. Maybe I would just have to keep chewing my little teddy the whole day long. He's in tatters anyway. Day before yesterday, before I went into a chemically-induced semi-hibernation, I was offered the sweetest biscuit I've ever tasted. I should've known something shifty was going on then as I immediately dozed off past that. I remember being carried by unknown people inside a cagey box. There was a moment when I panicked but then I saw dad's face. He had been there the whole time, giving careful instructions to the men who were carrying me and I knew whatever was being done was, maybe, necessary. But I didn't know we were shifting to a new house! In an entirely new place! From what I've seen since yesterday, I now have a large garden to roam around. I can now be a little more carefree about hitting things with a single wag of my

In a city where everyone is capitalizing on the moolah that the IT sector seems to provide, is it but wrong on the part of an auto-wallah of Bangalore to pounce upon the opportunities laid before him?  It is the city that doesn't allow the newly-paids to make a profit. Every friend who got placed, be it in IT companies or in chemical companies, is declaring himself broke by the end of every month. 'Khoon choos le, tu mera Khoon choos le' - perks of living in the newest metropolitan, I suppose? In the middle finger that comprises wholesome expenditures in Bangalore, the auto-wallahs of the city pose as the diamond-studded wedding ring. Non-existent are those who have traveled in an auto in Bangalore, hassle-free. '20 rupees extra!' - no, this universal expression doesn't come with a question mark or with a pleading, requested tone. Its an offer you just cannot refuse. And now the auto-wallahs of Bangalore seem to have taken lessons from their Chennai cou

It was a Saturday. It was a lazy afternoon. And to top it all, it required for me to travel an hour on the Mumbai local train to reach the venue. But still I went for the 'Mumbai For Women' blogger's meet, organized by The Times of India and Indiblogger . This wasn't to be the first time I'd be part of something that would rather require the involvement of women. Like the entire nation, I too, was awakened by the sheer effrontery of the Nirbhaya gang-rape case in the capital. The unprovoked and dastardly attack brought me to a face-off with how uncivilized our society has ultimately turned out to be. That how every essence of safety that we've carefully put up for ourselves, has been rendered senseless. Why is the progressive Indian society passively accepting this situation, for the last decade? Like a fellow blogger pointed out, unfortunately we're all here at this point of confrontation because of the use of a rusted, L-shaped, metallic wheel ja