I seem to have got out from the wrong side of the bed today morning. There's been so much of work since morning that I am surprised I found time to breath :-) So today it's just going to be a forwarded message. I hope I will be able to come up with some original content during the weekend.

हौसला तो तुझमे भी ना था मुझसे जुदा होनेका
वरना, काजल तेरी आखोमे पहले तो कभी फैला न था

Now one forwarded SMS:

एक दिन हमने अपने आसुओंको बहोत समझाया के तनहाइयो मे आया करो,
महफिल मे हमारा मज़ाक न उडाया करो

इस पर आसू तड़प कर बोले इतने लोगो मे भी आपको तनहा पाते है,
इस लिए आपका साथ देने चले आते है

I have almost run through the first season of Star Trek. But a family friend has already got 3rd season. :-) Oh, and I did watch the new movie. But more about that later....

There really should be some standard for the kind of news the TV channels bring to our living rooms. The other day I chanced upon one that was showing how Mr. Obama squashed a fly that was harassing him during an interview. I couldn't believe my eyes when the camera zoomed on the hapless (and lifeless!) creature that had the misfortune to crossthe path of the US Prez. I wonder if Mr. Obama was wishing right then that Osama could be squashed like that :-)

I couldn't help but think that in the good old cold war days the Americans would have suspected the Russians of "bug"ging the president :-)

I was munching through the last of the snacks that I had got from Trivendrum with me. I happened to glance at the packet just before throwing it in the dustbin. What I saw made me smile - one of the ingredients mentioned was "Besan Flower". :-)

Unfathomable as it is my love for Egypt, equally mystifying is my love for the mountains. I have alwayshoped that the last days of my life will be spent at a cozy cottage in the lap of a lush green mountain - possibly the Nilgiries or somewhere up north - if I can put up with snow.

That's why one of my favorite songs is "Milate hai dil yaha". It is picturized in what is shown as a woodencabin somewhere in the hills. There is a group of girls - with of course leading lady Rakhi - who are allwrapped up in warm clothes. They play in the snow. And in between the stanzas when Shashi Kapoor opens thewindow we get a glimpse of a snow-blanketed village - a string of lights shining through the snowy landscape.I have always wondered if that's a model rather than a shot of an actual village. But that doesn't stop mefrom escaping into my favorite day-dream.

I love the lines:
कल रहे ना रहे, मौसम ये प्यार का कल रुके न रुके, डोला बहार का

But my absolute favorites are:

झीलों के होंठों पर, मेघों का राग है
फूलों के सीने में, ठंडी-ठंडी आग है
दिल के आईने में तू, ये समां उतार दे

Will life give me a chance to spend my last days on earth amidst mountains, trees and tiny waterfalls?

It was a tough choice at the library yesterday - Christie's "Hercule Poirot's Christmas", John Grisham's"The Associate" and Paulo Coelho's "The Winner Stands Alone". I figured that if I let go of the last one thistime, it might be months before I will see the copy again. So I got it home with me.

I am not sure what is to be gained by doing a post-mortem study of India's exit from 20-20 World Cup. I am notsure if the players were fatigued but I am sure that they were over-confident - though I fail to understandwhere that over-confidence has come from, given their early exit from IPL.

The plain and simple truth is - It's all about Money, Honey! The only way to make these players fall inline is for the populace to hit them where it hurts the most. Stop buying the products that they endorse.Let the companies see the fall their sales are taking because of public wrath against the players. Let theplayers see the endorsements dry up. When their source of Vitamin M dries up, they will take pains to improvetheir performance.

But only if wishes were horses....

Auschwitz - Murder and Intrigue

I have stopped wondering about what makes me sit glued to the TV anytime any program about the Nazi era is aired on the History Channel - especially since every time I am filled with so much of revulsion as I watch it. :-( Last night it was "Auschwitz - Murder and Intrigue".

The sepia-tinted photos again. Long queues of hapless people - with kids in tow. Make your heart twist in pain. I can't imagine what made the Nazis think these people were a threat to their Fatherland. And then the survivors speak - about the painful period 60+ years ago. They tell you how they were separated on arrival from train, how some of them were marched straight to the gas chambers and how they lost their entire families because some weirdos thought they should be eliminated.

And then one guy talked about how he killed one German - possibly a convict - who was in one such train journey with him. When the unseen interviewer reminded him that it was a murder, he shrugged and said "So what? They killed so many people and I killed one German!" Somehow I couldn't disagree with him. :-(

Finished reading "The Brass Verdict" by Michael Connelly yesterday. Got good domain knowledge about Defense Attorney's office. :-)

Another crisp dialogue I heard is from the movie "Starsky and Hutch". When Snoop Dogg gets too close for comfort on the golf course, Vince Vaughn asks "Are we dating?" :-)

Flipping through the channels over the weekend, I landed in the midst of a movie called "Planet Terror" - another one of those "zombies on a rampage" movies. I was about to switch out when I heard one of the characters deliver a dialogue so funny that I cannot resist the temptation to repeat it here.

To cut the long story short, as in any zombie movie, a group of people are trying to save themselves. When handing out guns to them a cop instructs:

Don't shoot yourself, don't shoot each other and most important of all, don't shoot me :-)

There are two new ads that have me tearing my hair in frustration. One is the Max New York Life pension ad which I think is overly exaggerated. I don't think that anyone in India, no matter what pension plan he/she is having, will be able to behave in such a carefree way. MNYL makes it sound as if they are contributing for our pension out of their own pockets!

And the second ad is from Intel. Who is that USB guy? Can someone please tell him that his winking is bordering on obscenity? Why in the hell do these people sing the Intel jingle at the end of the ad? In times of recession it feels as if they didn't have any money to pay the musicians and so decided to sing it for themselves :-(

Over the weekend, I was reading an article about Richard Attenborough's new book. One of the anecdotes mentioned was that when Attenborough told the then US prez Ronald Reagan about his desire to make that movie, Reagan reportedly said "Yes, yes, Indira Gandhi's father!" :-)

And poor George Bush Jr was hauled over coals for saying "Czechoslovakia"!