Occasionally, people stump into a perilous pit only to be surrounded by pessimistic and dismissive emotions. Almost every human would have gone through this phase at least once in their lifetime. There’s no single reason that led to such self doubt but a series of incidents which would be pretty hard to trace back.
The festival of Bhogi (போகி) in South India is celebrated on the last day of the month mArgazhi (மார்கழி). The first day of the next month, thai (தை) is celebrated across Tamil Nadu with much fanfare and is also well known as the festival of Pongal (பொங்கல்). Pongal is also known by other names such as Sankaranti across India.
I happened to come across T. M. Krishna’s talk about his latest book – A Southern Music – A Karnatik Story. I’ve been looking forward to read it but haven’t got a chance yet, but came across this interview of sorts where he outlines what has gone into the book. I started viewing the video but after a good 10 minutes into it, I realized that this needs to go into writing too. So here I am re-seeking the video again and trying to capture the essence of it through this blog post.
Of late, I feel people have waned away from blogging thanks to more contemporary social networks some of whom insist on limiting you with 140 characters. While microblogging has been successful, I myself have been very erratic in using it as I have been with every other service. (Talk to me of ever being an early adopter and not being a constant user.) That has been the case with Twitter, Identi.ca, Google+, Buzz, Quora. The only social network that I frequent quite regularly is Facebook, perhaps because of the fact that I’ve resorted to being a consumer of news and not someone who can produce something interesting. While it pays off to learn about my friends’ lives, it certainly is a huge task to keep track of what every acquaintance is up to. The reason I’ve stuck so long with Facebook is that I took some efforts to trim down on whom I follow and whom I not, through the Lists feature and that has been working like a charm. So why did I stop using each of those services? That’ll diverge from the motive of this post and that’s for the future.
I recently subscribed to Netflix for the sake of House of Cards and one of the first videos that I saw was a TED talk by Dr. Amy Cuddy. When there are people who despise TED talks, I personally like some of them, if not all. I find them interesting because it is an avenue to know about people and how they are touching others’ lives. This talk by Dr. Cuddy is one that I found interesting and worth sharing.
The long weekend spent in Santa Barbara bore fruit, thanks to my pal, Karthick Santhanam. During our drive over Camino Cielo, we were dumbstruck, partly by the beautiful mountains and partly by Dr. L. Subramaniam’s virtuoso on the violin. For people who don’t know about this acclaimed artist, he is one of the pioneers in the world of music and is one of the very few artists who is adept with both the Carnatic and Western styles of playing the violin. For people who need a taste of what he is capable of, please listen to this. Apologies for the lack of sync between the audio and the video!
Thanks to one of my friends, I got my Google+ invite on June 30th. I woke up and found an invite in my inbox and immediately, I signed up. Having seen the screenshots and videos of it, I assumed it to be better than facebook and the rest.
Greetings! In today’s world, anything without an “i” as a prefix, hasn’t got much value to it. The ahambhaavam (sense of I – ego) has an altogether different meaning these days. It’s all about whether you possess a coveted iDevice or not and if you don’t, or if you are even remotely nonchalant about its existence in your neighbour’s pocket, you’ll be looked down with disdain. It’s hard to not be amused about how cellphone companies cash in on people’s ignorance and thrust on them, pieces of silicon with a highly polished LCD screen. Furthermore, you’ll have to shell out thousands every month, just for some sparingly genuine usage of mail and the exceedingly trash talk on facebook and the like. And before I proceed, this shall be applicable to all you android junkies, windows phone wizards, blackberry bosses, bada brigadiers and any other smartphone user. Also, a piece of word to people who know me. If you think this is a case of sour grapes just because I lost my iPod Touch and am scared as hell to get another device, then, in a way, you’re right; but I’m happy that I found it out early and through the hard way that I don’t need a smartphone in my life, at least for now! 🙂 It is a bit annoying and sad to see people deluded into getting smartphones mainly because his next cabin mate has got one! A classic reenactment of the cap seller and the monkeys story.
Ever since I started watching cricket (the 1996 world cup), I’ve always dreamt of India winning it. I wanted to cherish the emotions and feelings that would’ve ran through Kapil’s Devils in ‘83. And here it is! After 15 years of wait (for me), the World Cup has come home.
Pictures showing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010.