Ninaivugal...Thoughts

On the world map, there is this little tiny speck of dot about the size of a micron in the central part of North America named Rolla . The place is in obscurity, not only to people outside the United States but also to people within. Any trip outside the state of Missouri, and you can see the people straining their ears to come to grips with the township of Raala (as it is pronounced). But, Indians that we are, we find that extension of the aaa to be a little mesmerizing and more often than not, our tongue ends up rolling into a Rollaa . The local community here would give you a silent glare for murdering the pronunciation. Pic: UMR The graduate school here at Rolla is quite a famous school in Missouri, and the Indian population just fills up. Yes, but just two streets from the department to the apartment. University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) , now rechristened to Missouri School of Science and Technology is the best of the lot in Missouri for the engineering program. Every year, one ...

The essence of a novel taken to big screen lies in the way the originality of the book is preserved. It is highly important that the core values of the characters etched in the book is translated to perfectly similar characters on the big screen. It is not entirely impossible, but only very few film makers can pull off such a thing with absolute conviction. Mira Nair had a very tough job on her hands to maintain the standards of the brilliant book by Jhumpa Lahiri . At the end of the day, I now can understand why the entire crew was so confident of the movie. I had the opportunity to view the movie at Seattle. I generally do not expect much from movies based on adaptations from literature because it is no easy task to realise the originality of the script. This was no different though all the reviews were positive. The movie started off in a brilliant Calcutta setting, reeling off titles in English embedded in Bengali script. The start itself gave me a feeling of an unknown au...

A flight journey has never had the charm to hold me onto something interesting or something that I can look forward to. It has always been a careless " Oh no! yet another " attitude that drives me to boredom. In yet another long journey flight from St. Louis to Seattle, I just wondered at what I should be doing to satisfy my seven hours including the transit time at Chicago. A copy of Kane and Abel lying in one of the many corners wedged in my room caught my attention. I have read that book previously but that did not prevent me from reading the same thing again. As the saying goes, " Something is better than nothing " takes an all important meaning when you really have nothing. Flipping through the pages of the book, yes, that's what I remember. A second time reading does not generally fascinate me unless the book is really good. Kane and Abel had me in raptures when I had read it first time during my undergraduate days. I would rate it as one of my al...

You just have to open any Indian news website and the headlines scream forth - Abhiwarya Wedding, What happened in the last one hour, Sangeet at the wedding, Men jealous of Abhishek... and so on the nonsense continues. I just wonder why the media has to give so much publicity to a private wedding affair. Is anyone really interested in finding out what they are upto? There is a limit to all the idiosynchracies and after a point, it really gets on your nerves. It is also apalling to see a new comment everyday from Amitabh Bachchan proclaiming his son to be a demigod or something, praising his acting skills and what not. Why in the world should the world be interested in whether Aishwarya is a good daughter-in-law for the family or not? What is the need for Jaya Bachchan to issue such statements? The front page of every Indian newspaper is hogged by the wedding as if there is no other important issue to tackle at this point of time. To top it all, the coverage continues as to who the inv...

It was one helluva month, what with the thesis defense and course completion. To top it all, the H1Bs were getting over even before it actually began. But, right now, the relatively free state of mind allows me to get back to blogging. I am going to be much more regular with my blog updates. It is like one of those television serials, " Amitabh Bachchan in a brand new avatar making a comeback like never before ." I also wonder at all the movie artists who make bigwig statements like " This movie is completely different. Such a sensitive topic has never been handled before. It is a once in a lifetime role ." What crap! What nonsense! It would almost make me tear my hair in agony at the cliched statements. I do not want to create that artificial hype and aura about my comeback to regular blogging. There would be periodic updates on anything I find remotely interesting. I would have loved to write about India's world cup prospects, but the way they have damaged the...