Around The Coast in 8 Days

Double Whammy

A setback or a double blow.


Whammy 1: When your friends who come to pick you stop in their tracks looking at your suitcase which looks like KingKong's weekend backpack. One of them actually wonders if you are going back home straight. All of them give sly smiles.

Whammy 2: After you have explained to them about your planning capabilities and how you have handled every eventuality that could ever arise, you find that you have missed (a) your tooth-brush, (b) your winter jackets and thick gloves and (c) the powercord to your laptop. Considering the fact that (a) you have to brush atleast once a day, (b) you have travelled to the east coast during winter and (c) you have beaten your chest like a bull-troll to folks that you would "work from home", this should qualify as a triple whammy. Look on the brighter side, you have enough innerwear to last you a few years on a remote island.


Dog-tired

Exhausted to the point of open-mouthed panting like a dog.

New Yorkers are in love with quite a bunch of things. Honking is one. Definitely. Walking is another. An average newyorker would spend a good portion of his life walking down the pavements than, say, breathing and blinking. The whole of NewYork is just a big grid with avenues running north-south and streets running east-west. Pick two numbers in random, and that would be a spot in the city. Of course, you can rent a car and drive inside NYC, but you also need to convert your entire ancestral property into dollars to pay the parking fees, this is assuming you are lucky enough to find one. Second, you have to hope that your car remains in the same position and the same way as it was parked. Third, and the most difficult part, is that you have to renew your insurance policy against accidental runovers by cabs. So I walk. From WTC to Wall Street. And then I walk again. From Wall Street to Battery Park. And then I walk yet again. From Battery Park to Brooklyn Bridge. Since I havent dropped dead yet, I start walking again, from Brooklyn Bridge to Broadway. And mind you, all this in the first day. United Nations, 5th Ave, Park Ave, Lexington Ave, Broadway, Times Square, Central Park - If I had walked in a straight line wearing a cotton garb over a matter of principle on Retail Rights on Distribution of Sodium Chloride, I could have atleast made it big (mind you, no disrespect to the gentleman in question). Sigh.


On A Wing and A Prayer

Hoping to succeed relying only on good fortune.


Getting stuck in a car in the downtown of any city is a nightmare. If it is washington, d.c, its worse. For some reasons, the route to a specific destination does not involve straights, pillayar temples, lefts, nayar tea stalls, rights and a corporation water tank. In here, it is north, blocks, south-east and avenues. Since my sense of direction would make me belong in the leagues of Roald Amundsen and Edmund Hillary, directions were out of question. After having incurred the wrath of The Chimp by waking her up at 4 in the morning (which was after she crashed at 1 am after a bad day at work), I couldn't goad her to go faster, lest she would throw me out of the car and run me over just to feel better. With the clock inside her car ticking away to glory, I started seeing scenes of being stranded in the station with my monster suitcase. Usually, as a thumb rule, most of the folks here I have spoken with knew only the name of their street. A handful knew the closest running street. Almost none could remember two streets from where they stay. A street few blocks away and you would be a suspect sizing up the neighborhood. Imagine a monster running out of a car at 5 in the morning and asking such questions. Considering my luck, if I startle a finger-itchy cop, it would be bye-bye-blue-sky. But then, since I was on a prayer (title appears; applause), the two gentlemen who put me on the right route and the ticket station clerk who sent me to the right gate in that alibaba cave of a train station could have had wings (title re-appears, applause again) hidden inside their shirts. Thanking my stars, I later tell The Chimp that the train was late. The Chimp doesnt even react, but says that her clock in her car was fast. Cliches. I love them.


A Fool's Errand
An attempt to do something that has no chance of success.

You are in a party where the motto is to get sloshed. You turn to your left and you see someone gulping down beer. To your right is that lady who is shaking a martini. Behind is a big group debating the pros and cons of white wine vis-a-vis red wine by using themselves as test subjects. And right ahead is the big cellar which is a whos-who of the world of booze. You dont feel lost out, because you are a genius. You have strategically planted a bottle of apple cider which comes in a case that would easily pass for champagne and looks surprisingly close to it in texture. To cap off your genius, your pour it onto a transparent glass and use your sleep-weary eyes as a substitute for that dipsy look. People think you are going to get wasted if you take another sip, and you prove them wrong by driving down another mug. Alls well. And then, at the end of the party, your best friend's wife expresses her sincere disappointment that she has run short of apple cider and hopes that you can manage with mountain dew because everything else has alcohol. Someone puts a pin in a big balloon.

Good Samaritan

A good samaritan is one who helps another in a time of need with no thought of reward.

Someone who cancels his date with his girlfriend to show you around his town and get you good lebanese food for dinner - Mall

Someone who lets a stranger inside their house just because someone else vouched for it (the sanity levels of that someone is under heavy dispute) - Appu

Someone who walks the walk and talks the talk with you (literally) inspite of having walked down the same alleys a million times over on a weekend which otherwise could have been spent peacefully - Vish

Someone who takes every effort from picking you up from the airport on your day in, and your safe way back to the airport on the way out, goes one more step and puts you up in his apartment right in the heart of manhattan (10 blocks from Times Square - no kidding) - Bull

Someone who actually bunks work just to give you company inspite of having a bad hair day at office, cooks your dinner and puts up with your eccentricities - The Chimp.

You were unbelievable folks. Really.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...

2006 - In Style

Courtesy The Christ and The Anti-Christ (well, one of them anyway), we had a week off before the new years, and this year's prep up to the new year is by far the best. It all started off with a drive through Nevada to Vegas, some lavish Roulette and Backgammon at "The BellagiO", An indoor beach inside a night club, Vodka (of course, shaken; not stirred). That was followed by some parasailing near the Golden Gate bridge, some white water rafting, rock climbing, an amazing bungee jump near the Edgar Hoover Dam and to top it all, a bird's eye view from a suite in The Ritz to see the ball drop at Times Square. And yeah, I also killed Gold Finger and Blofeld while stopping a doomsday nuclear warhead 0.07 seconds before it exploded. C'mon folks, if you could believe all the stuff said earlier, you could as well believe this. Thanks to the one friend I have who swears by a supposedly active social calendar I have, my entire week preceding the New Year was based within an area 3 miles in radius. So, There, I do not have a calendar, I am not social and active is as far as the pole star.

In anycase, here is a random collection of stuff that would probably benefit the reader. Three Songs that have been playing throughout, Three Books I read, Three Movies of brilliance I watched, Three acts of suicide I attempted and One useful fact.

Talk by Coldplay has to rank in the top somewhere of any alternate rocker's playlist. Is it something that easily comes to british bands, the art of making easy-going music ?? With clear influences from Radiohead and U2, Coldplay are on their way to the top, if not already.

The fact that Joaquin Phoenix has given the performance of his life meant nothing to me. But the idea that Reese Witherspoon is in the reckoning for an oscar nom piqued my interest about Johnny Cash and his works. And there, I listened to Long Black Veil. I havent listened to the original. I havent listened to the other covers. I know that they wouldnt stand a chance.

I was never the intellectual types when it came to music and No, this is no attempt at modesty. I nod my head vigorously when I listen to Carnatic and when no one is looking at me I yawn and make faces. Western Classical would probably not have me making faces, but I would definitely yawn. In an attempt to strike a pose of a well-rounded individual (for you sniggering folks, thats a metaphor) , I took my first dig at Beethoven and due to divine intervention, I run into Fur Elise. One of those songs which probably even cattle would listen to in rapt attention. Heck, It held me (read: troll) for the entire three minute stretch. Cattle should be cakewalk.

Most blurbs for books shamelessly lie about "Riveting Action" and "The Genius of a writer". The one for Artemis Fowl said "Refreshing" and that is true to the letter. A magical story with so little of magic. A fantasy story without a dragon or a dark lord who chases hapless kids in dreams. A story with different species, but no old man to shepherd the lead character. And lastly, an utterly amoral (although not for long) hero. Eoin Colfer, You rock.

Reading one book with 800 pages can be tiresome. Writing one can be worse. To write seven such books should be herculean. To keep them all interesting, Nope, I ran out of superlatives there. That is exactly what Stephen King does with The fifth book of the Dark Tower series: Wolves of The Calla. How King manages to hold our attention by alluding slyly to pop-culture (fans of harry potter, watch out ;-) ) is beyond me. In anycase, the sixth book lies at a hand's reach and I cant wait to get to it.

For someone with very limited knowledge of books like me, Christopher Priest is a lost name. But for someone who thinks Christopher Nolan is the next best thing to happen to hollywood like me, this would ring a bell. Yes folks, Nolan is currently onto three projects - A batman sequel, A movie called The Exec and a Movie adaptation of Christopher Priest's Prestige. Inspite of 80% of the book being in reported speech, Priest manages to keep the suspense until the last page. Cant wait to see Nolan's script-writing genius take this to the theatres.

Gael Garcia Bernal gives a true-to-life performance of the charismatic Che Guevara in his early 20-s in the spanish movie The Motorcycle Diaries. Filmed in such eye-catchy locations like The Andes and The Atacama, the movie talks about how a young doctor called Ernesto became an icon like Che. Would recommend all those yuppies who wear a Che T-Shirt to watch this movie first. Mental note: Cancel plans for trip to Vegas. Save aforesaid money for trip to south america.

A fledgling director approaches a studio with his retro script called American Graffiti. The studio, in a current daze of indie films, approves it after finding a producer. The director, then casts two relatively unknown guys as leads and a completely unknown guy for a minor role. Later, the studio threatens to stop the movie and scratch the project, only for the producer to pledge his own skin to get it through. Thankfully, the movie made enough money and everyone got their careers in motion. The director, later made another movie starring the actor who played a minor role and both of them became marginally popular. The name of the movie was Star Wars and the character offered was one Han Solo. The producer made some name for himself, you might have heard the name Francis Ford Coppola somewhere. And yeah one of the lead heroes, A Richard Dreyfuss starred in a moderatelly successful movie called Jaws and the other one, A Ron Howard won something called an Oscar for directing a movie called A Beautiful Mind. Folks, watch American Graffiti and you know the reason behind such great movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Well, let us not talk about the prequels shall we ??

A POW camp in Germany '44. A cold-hearted commandant. A wily barrack-superintendent. A mysterious spy amidst the american prisoners. What is new, you ask. I have seen The Great Escape, you say. No, my friend. You still havent heard the best part. Now add Billy Wilder into the equation and you get a cynical hero, a tireless captain, a smart lieutenant, two comic grunts and some good music. In case I forgot, a truck full of humor that would have you laughing and cheering on. Stalag 17 beats any other WWII movie by a landslide with its depiction of clear-cut characters, all defined in-depth and deep humor and emotion. If you are a WWII movie fan, dont miss this for your life.

It is being brought to my notice that people propound a theory that making Lemon Rice is one of the easiest things on Earth. That is a lie. There are people who squeeze lemon after lemon in an attempt to change the color of the rice to golden yellow, only realising later that its the turmeric powder that does it and end up eating lemon puree with rice toppings. Easy, my freaking left foot.

When I was a kid, I had a great joke in my sleeve. Seriously, at that point of time, everyone would burst out laughing when I throw it at them. These days, I would be lucky to get out in one piece. The joke is a humorous song. Now, think of something really tragic because you are going to end up tearing your guts. You have been warned. It goes thus: "Washing powder Nirma. Aaya veetla Gurma". Bwahahaha. In anycase, all that is irrelevant info. The point being, finally, I made Kurma which would get atleast 35% marks in any scale.

I decree Drumstick as the King of Vegetables. Regardless of all the mushy bagyaraj jibes about how it helps in you-know-what during you-know-when, there is nothing to beat the flavor it gives to Sambar. Absolutely. Makes you think you are Sanjeev Kapoor.

The one useful fact, as promised, for all bloggers. When you are seriously running short of time to update your blog, shamelessly make it into a hodge-podge of stuff that you did over the last week. Sometimes, it just works. Trust me.

Read on ... (at your own peril, obviously) ...