Given Shah Rukh’s affinity for smoking, I won’t be surprised if Kolkota Knight Riders decide to purchase a tobacco firm. Then it’ll be yet another case of KKR being involved in Barbarians at the gate
PS: Today‘s was one of the best games of the IPL so far. A low total defended successfully on a decent pitch. An excellent show of fast bowling, a few run outs, late recovery, bad umpiring (Tiwary had an inside edge)
I don’t understand why most temples ban photography inside the premises. I mean there are so many strong things that are there inside temples that are “capture-able” that it’s almost criminal that photography is banned. My mom says the ban is so that unscrupulous elements don’t take pictures and then distort them. If this is the reason, then I think it’s better to allow these unscrupulous elements to collect bad karma by distorting images. Anyways.
One signboard inside the Horanadu temple said (ok i’m translating here) – “parents are requested to ensure that their children don’t pee inside the temple”. Unfortunately, by the time I saw this notice, I’d already seen one other that said photography is banned inside the temple. However, I don’t think the temple had done a good job of putting up this signboard in all appropriate places. Before I’d seen one such signboard, I’d already shot a small video of the mangalarathi. It isn’t too clear but then I shot it in a “no video” area so …
Anyway the point of the photography ban has to do more with the Kalaseshwara temple in Kalasa (some 10 km from Horanadu). There, I noticed an unusual thing – a face had been painted on the lingam. I mean, I thought the purpose of the lingam was because Lord Shiva has to be worshipped in the phallic form. Now, when someone goes and draws a head on it, I don’t really know what to say.
The thing is this isn’t an isolated occurrence. I saw in Sringeri, too, in a couple of places, where a face had been painted on the lingam. I seriously don’t know what the painter was thinking. Or was it a conscious effort by the uber-moral Sringeri mutt to de-sex the lingam?
Now that this half-blasphemous title is out of the way, let me get straight to the point. Actually I think a bit of beating around the bush is warranted. When I read Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist, I wasn’t sure if i would be quoting part of this book on my blog. However, considering that I almost directly applied one of the ideas mentioned in the book, I think it deserves a mention.
I was just going through the program list of the classical music season at the Fort High School grounds. What strikes me is that whenever two siblings in the same family are good at this kind of stuff, they pair up and advertise themselves after their town or something.
I don’t know who was the first pairing that started this, but now artistes naming themselves in this way has become way too popular. It almost seems like if one person in the family is good at carnatic music, he/she forces his/her sibling to take it up too – so that they can become a duet and give themselves a cool name.
The interesting thing is it’s always “X Brothers” or “Y sisters”. It’s never a brother-sister combination. Maybe “Velachery siblings” doesn’t sound that good. Other relationships, too, are taboo. There may be say a couple who always perform together, or a father-son pair who are usually a team, but they don’t usually advertise themselves as a team, and prefer to go by their individual names instead. Maybe the lack of elegant names (such as “brothers”) prevents them from doing so.
This trend of brothers and sisters is catchign on so much that soon you’ll have people deciding to become each other’s Rakhi brothers or Rakhi sisters or rakhi brother of a rakhi sister so that they could give themselves names such as this. Maybe the quest for interesting names might even bring in the band culture to Carnatic music (on a more serious note, one of the thrills of Carnatic music is watching people who’ve never met before getting together and creating music). Interesting times lie ahead.
Anyways here is a list of all the siblings that I found on the program list:
Ok. There aren’t too many. But we are getting to a stage where the whole program sheet will be filled with names like this.
On another note, certain entries in the list read something like “WOWCTB and party”. This kind of nomenclature is extremely unfair to the “accompanists” (which is again a derogatory term). The violin and the percussion are as much a part of the concert as what is known as the “main instrument”. Just pick any singer. Any singer. And imagine him/her singing alone without any instruments.You get it right?
i think i’m going to have some free time in the first week of may. i used to have this plan of randomly touring karnataka. and despite the heat, i think this would be a good time to do it. also, given that it’s election time, I think i can get lots more insights from my proposed tour.
i hope i can get someone to sponsor this trip. in return i’ll blog about it for them, and write maybe three articles per day about my travels and insights. Hell, I’ll be doing a grassroot level election coverage for them! So I’ll definitely be adding valoo.
i wonder how to approach this problem. can someone please suggest?
There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories regarding the finance minister’s announcement of the Rs. 60000 crore farm loan waiver. Let me add one more theory to it.
According to a survey done by the Business Standard, which got published today, the total outstanding bad farm debt in the books of commercial banks totals Rs. 11000 Crore. The rest of the Rs. 60000 Crore of bad debt is held by sundry co-operative banks and regional rural banks.
The BS article also mentions that the compensation to the banks is going to be in the form of cash, and not in the form of a mixture of cash and bonds as was speculated earlier. There is no mention of the timing of the transfer of money from the governments to the banks. Also, the article says that the government will allow the banks to transfer their provision for doubtful debt to the bottomline as profits.
Now, name one Indian “leader” who you would associate with co-operative banks.
This entire announcement of the farm loan waiver is nothing but a conspiracy to transfer taxpayer funds to random cooperative banks, whose main business is to dole out (note that i’m not saying loan) funds to politicians who back them and their families. Starting from the honourable President of course.
Aadisht had written that this waiver was a conspiracy to recapitalize PSU banks. That in itself, as a first step of privatisation, might have been remotely acceptable. However, now it seems like it’s more like a conspiracy to fund politicians using taxpayer money – indirectly by way of funding co-operatives and regional rural banks. A fantastic plan, one must say. One that has all of the President’s blessings.
Literally. I woke up this morning to find one random drunk guy lying drunk in my garden, making random noises. I tried to? shout trying to wake him up so that he would go. But to no avail.
He had been first sighted last night at around ten o’clock. He was lying in front of my neighbor’s house. Groaning. I remember taking special care to make sure all gates were locked. I had also been slightly relieved – that he was in front of my neighbors’ house and not mine. So it was their job to do the clean-up act.
Later in the night he had apparently gained entry into my neighbor’s compound. They had tried to chase him away but to no avail. They’d dialed 100 (at 3 am) but no cops arrived. And sometime in the middle of the night he had scaled the walls to enter our compound.
It took some 3 calls to 100. Each time a lady would pick up, ask what the problem was, and then take down my full address (though I thought “opposite upendra’s house” was a better indicator of the location of my house than the postal address). And then say that the cops would be there in 15 mins. On the third call, the lady was like “oh so he’s still lying around? i’ll send the cops”. Maybe she’d assumed that the situation would take care of itself and precious police resources needn’t be wasted on this! Maybe she’d assumed the same when my neighbor called her at 3am.
There was a call from the “south control room” when a polite policeman confirmed our address and location and said that the cops would be in in 5 mins. This time the promise was kept. A couple of policemen arrived on a “cheetah” and started poking around this guy with a stick. Thankfully he was alive. and then they managed to beat him till he woke up and he was sent off.
The policemen told me that this unresponsiveness of the control room was a common occurrence and henceforth we should just get in touch with the police station directly.
On the whole a mildly scary experience??
Dear ________ (once again I don’t know your name)
I know I need to improve my social skills. It’s been almost two years since I saw someone who I thought I should put blade on. It had been ages since I saw a woman who I couldn’t take my eyes off. And I just let it go. I had a clear half hour window. And I spent it merely trying to establish eye contact, in vain.
It was in the BTS bus this evening. Volvo bus number 500K. Going from ITPL to Vijayanagar. It was around 530 when you got in at either Devarabisanahalli or Bellandur. And five minutes short of six o’clock when you, much to my disappointment, got off at BTM water tank (i’ll explain the source of disappointment presently).
I had diligently finished the first 11 pages of today’s Business Standard by the time you stepped in. And had plans to finish the next two pages – the editorials and op-eds – by the time I got off at East End. I couldn’t get started on the first op-ed. The weird sense of morality that my mom has drilled into me didn’t allow me to be too explicit, but most of the next half hour was spent looking at you, and hoping that the guy next to me would get off so that you could take his seat.
I was sitting in the first row behind the back door, to the extreme right. I was in what my mom described as “Aiyappa clothes” – black t-shirt and black jeans. And had a pink paper in my hand (ok if you don’t know that the Business Standard is pink, I don’t love you anymore). In front of me was this large empty standing space and I was constantly egging you on to come occupy it. Maybe I’d find some intelligent line to start off then? Unfortunately you preferred to stand in the crowded front part of the bus, between those firangs. Only solace was that you later found a “backward-facing seat”, so you sat directly facing me, some four meters away, just out of earshot so I couldn’t figure out what language you were speaking when you were on the phone. To paraphrase some lyrics, your lips moved but I couldn’t hear what you were saying.
I know you might be getting pained reading this. The size of the paragraphs have been increasing monotonically. Hence this one-line paragraph to break the monotony. Damn. It’s already two lines long. One and a half rather. No, it’s two.
Now that we have broken the monotony. I seriously didn’t know what to do in the bus. It wouldn’t have been especially present to have come up to you and start chatting up, especially we were seated four meters away initially. I kept hoping you’d help me establish eye contact and that just didn’t happen. And when you got down at the BTM water tank. Oh wait I owe you an explanation.
On the 500K route, there is a discontinuity about the probability of your being a local rather than an “IT types”. The probability shoots up at Bannerghatta road – the west side being more likely to be local. So it was a bit of a disappointment, I must say, when you got off just before the discontinuity. Of course, I could’ve gotten off after you – though it was a kilometer before where i was supposed to get off – and run after you and introduced myself and asked for your number.
However, what are the odds that that would’ve succeeded? In full public view that too? Don’t you agree that the probability of that clicking is significantly lesser than that of you looking at this blog post? Yes, for a moment I thought otherwise and shifted in my seat. Then, decided that the returns weren’t commensurate with the risks. So here I am. Writing an open letter to you. On my blog. And hoping that you read it. And if you do read it, reach out to me by email. skthewimp AT yahoo DOT com
Regards,
SKimpy
To my readers
was thinking about it on the way back from the gym this evening. i have a big starting problem. i have a problem in randomly approaching random women and striking conversation with them. i believe once i get talking, i can take care of things from then on and things will go the way they are supposed to.
i remember reading this on the dilbert blog a few months back. scott adams had talked about what it takes to be successful. he had said that you need to be either in the top 1% of the world in what you are good at, or you should be in the top 25% in two or three different things, and should be able to combine them. he’d illustrated it with the fact that though he isn’t in the top 1% of anything, he’s in the top 25% in drawing and humor and understanding corporate life, so he’s made it big with dilbert.
now, coming back to what I started with – on getting started with a conversation. one way you can get talking is to make a really really good impression the first time you see each other, in which case you’ll be able to chat her up. the other way to do this is if you meet her in two or three different unrelated contexts. it’s much easier this way.
for example, if i meet in some random function this female whom i’d seen at some random quiz some time back, it won’t be that awkward to chat her up using the quiz as the initial context. the important thing is that you both vaguely remember each other, so she won’t really think it’s some random bloke trying to chat her up.
and by the way, here i’m referring to contexts where you aren’t really required to speak to each other. for example, say if you meet someone at a group discussion, you’re forced to talk to each other then! so you get to know the other person without really feeling awkward.
i’m sleepy now so not very coherent with my thoughts. but let me know if i’m making sense.
Given my superior long term memory (for which i’ve paid a huge price in terms of an extremely bad short-term memory), I keep running this “this day that year” iteration in my head. On a certain day, I try and figure out what I did on the same day a few years back. Some memories stick, others don’t. For some “significant” dates (such as my birthday) lots of events stick. For others, nothing would’ve happened. However, I have a feeling that I accurately remember most “significant events”.