Idle musings

KODAGU TRIP     My parents, my wife, uncle, aunt and I visited Madikeri from 8-Nov-07 to 10-Nov-07. What follows are impressions from the trip.     To begin with, 8-Nov-07 was Deepawali, but it was difficult to recognize that. When we got up at 5:30 a.m., the early morning was rather surprisingly silent. For a Deepawali morning, that was unusual : I expected young children to begin bursting crackers at the earliest possible time ! The price of crackers must have made the city more quieter than usual this time around. The Toyota Qualis came at 6:30 as promised. Even at 6:50 when we left, the morning was a cool and silent morning, just like other mornings.     We (my parents, uncle, wife and I) sped towards Mysore, zipping on the state highway 17. The traffic was minimal - or so we thought until we reached Kamat Lokaruchi for breakfast !! The rush there was unbelievable : it seemed like that all the missing traffic was at Lokaruchi :-)) We waited for 10 minutes to get a table and then a

TWENTY 20, CRICKET AND INDIAN CRICKET     Yesterday, the first one dayer between India and Australia was washed out in Bangalore. The Australians have made an ominous beginning to the Future Cup. After being 90 for 4, they ended up with 307/ 7 in 50 overs. The "pup" Michael Clarke made 131 off 130 balls. Romesh Powar's bowling was rusty  : he gifted full tosses as the first ball in the first couple of overs of his second spell. The well-settled Clarke and Brad Haddin needed no second invitation and duly clouted the balls for sixes. R. P. Singh also erred in line, bowling to the leg stump of the right handers. Again this was capitalized by the Australians. This was a match that we would have lost 8 times out of 10.     Before the match, there was the usual war of words and Andrew Symonds was quoted as saying that he was amazed by the (over?) rection in the Indian media to India's Twenty 20 World Cup triumph. He needs to understand India better if he has to get past hi

MAATHAAD MAATHAADU MALLIGE     Last week, my wife and I watched the Kannada movie "Maathaad Maathaadu Mallige" (henceforth called MMM, for the sake of brevity!). The website of the movie is at  http://www.mathadmathadumallige.com/ , directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekar. He chooses current themes for his films. All his earlier movies also had the same relevance. "America America" dealt with the migration of Indian middle class to USA while "Hoomale" is a story set in Assam. The topical nature of his movies make them interesting to watch. His personal website is http://www.nagathihalli.com/films.html .     The second aspect I like in his movies is the way he names his characters ! So, in "America America" there is a Bhoomika, a Shashank and a Surya. The names translate to Earth, Moon and Sun and the three characters form the eternal romantic triangle in the movie. In the dialogues of the movie there are puns around their names that fit in well i

    THOUGHTS ON TRANSPORT     On the day before yesterday, I was caught in a traffic jam while returning from work. For Bangalore, this is a common event, of course. The reason this time was the Varamahalakshmi festival. Before any festival, it looks like that middle class Bangalore comes to shop in all its markets ! There were two hot spots in my route and it took me 15 minutes to cross a stretch that should have been done in 5 ! Since I was in a staff bus and the music on my portable music player was insipid, my thoughts turned to traffic and what could be done to improve it. I suppose I should have been frustrated and cursing the traffic, but for some reason my thoughts were more reflective than angry ! What could be done to resolve the chronic traffic issues in our city ?     The most commonly touted solutions passed through my head, of course ! The upcoming Bangalore Metro ( http://www.bmrc.co.in/ ) may be a panacea to some extent. Then there are the initiatives taken by the gove

CHENNAI     Last weekend, my wife and I visited Chennai.     Her brother is doing his doctorate in IIT and he booked a guest house for us. We left on the night of 4-Jul. Our tickets were booked for a train at 11:30 in the night. When we reached the station, it was not even 10:00 p.m. yet. Suma suggested that we could check if tickets for an earlier train were available. This was a master stroke ! There were ample number of tickets and we got the middle berths.     For both of us, it was a long time since we travelled in sleeper class. She had last visited Mantralaya travelling in a train while my previous trip was even earlier. In fact it was more than 18 years ago when my parents and I moved from Mumbai to Bangalore ! Not much has changed in 2nd class 3 tier coaches since then though ! There were the cushioned seats, the blue light, the emergency chain with the warning that it must not be pulled (therefore when I was younger it made me wonder what would happen if I did pull it !!) an

RANDOM THOUGHTS .... about the cricket World Cup, books that make me think and Spiderman 3     The dust has settled since I last wrote. India bowed out of the cricket World Cup leading to a lot of condemnation of our cricketing heroes. The Wall, the master, the Bengal tiger ..... everybody in the cricket team became objects of criticism. A lot of it was justified since we simply expect and demand more in the only team sport that we can think of being world beaters ! The World Cup went on with Sri Lanka emerging as the possible contenders for the cup. In the end though, it was the sheer professionalism and preparedness of Australia that saw them through easily. I saw a hoarding of a famous Australian beer that put it best. It simply said : "Australian for HABIT" and showed the cricket world cup ! That hoarding says it all !     What of India ? Piyush Chawla made a promising debut in the one dayers against Bangladesh, but there are still some key people missing. I like the inc

MY DREAM INDIAN CRICKET TEAM The Cricket World Cup ( http://www.cricketworldcup.com ) is in progress in the West Indies and yesterday, we lost to Bangladesh. In my opinion, Dravid erred in choosing to bat. Perhaps, the plan was that we would get good batting practice for the later matches in the first innings and then we could restrict them. Of course, the Bangladeshi bowlers had other plans ;-) The morning "juice" in the wicket was rather venomous. In the early part of our innings, the ball moved around just enough to keep our batsmen quiet. It took Yuvraj's belligerence to cut the shackles loose. I wish Dhoni had built on Yuvraj's knock. I expect that the two of them will be very important for India's chances in the World Cup, particularly against Sri Lanka. In my view, Dhoni has the maturity to play a steadying role in the middle overs since he can also run well between wickets. Yuvraj and he are the two best runners when we bat. If they come to bat in the mid