A little doubt in Bollywood Trivia

So Wiki informs me that Konkona Sen is the daughter of filmmaker Aparna Sen and science writer and journalist Mukul Sharma.

Now my doubt is this: Is this Mukul Sharma the same guy who used to write the column ‘Mindsport’ for the Sunday Times of India?

If this is so… Konkona Sen has a lot to live up to in my eyes.

A trip, some pics, some feelin’ low, and a lot of Jazz trippin’…

So I half-awoke on Friday morning to my cousin asking me ‘We’re going to Vellore to see the Golden Temple… coming?’. I said yes in my sleep, and had a great twenty-four hours. This Golden Temple is quite obviously a place where photography is not allowed, and so I ended up clicking images of wrong spellings on signboards as is expected in TN, cows and goats, and the elusive racket-tailed drongo.

I thought up a thousand different ways to write about this, with images, but hell… I don’t feel like writing about the trip anymore. I was feeling rather high a month-and-a-half back, but the ebbing has been catalyzed in the past twenty-four hours….

But that apart, I’ve gotten rather addicted to this website: http://www.fizy.com … Great site, which has a huge database of music and music videos…. why, they even had Chaandni Raatein by Partners in Rhyme! They also have a few songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone and Ira Gershwin. And I found this jazz band called The Manhattan Transfer… rather good, they are!

That apart, I’ve had a rather eventful February and March. I want to blog about it, but some things need… what-d’you-call-it… closure, before they can be blogged about.

The long weekend draws to a close, and so does March… hopefully it means better times ahead for me and the rest of the world….. considering elections are ’round the corner.

I also have an idea for a webapp… a playlist app for fizy.com where you can search for your favorite songs and drag and drop those onto another pane to make a playlist… what say? It should take a couple of days at worst to implement, no? Googling says they are planning to come up with one, but it’ll be fun to try it out.

Mettu Podu – Alltime favorites by Rehman

You are warned. Long Post Ahead.

I’m pretty sure every urban South Indian has one of these. Quite obviously… Rahman would score music for all those feel-good flicks that would be megahits. And even if they were not, the music would be a superhit for sure… which meant you’d hear of them. And hear them over and over again. Either on the radio or in the interval at the movies, or in weddings, or in someone’s car, or on TV…. basically there was no escape. And no one wanted one either… the music was different, and good. So you end up having a lot of memories tangled with quite a few of these songs. Some of these songs manage to stick with you through the ages and enter the hallowed portals of what you consider ‘alltime great’ songs. Here are mine:

• Mettu Podu from Duet: A very nice fusion-ish song. I suspect the lead character was made a saxophonist just so that ARR could use nice sax melodies for the songs in the movie. It’s a nice idea to have a wedding musician who plays the sax (in the movie)… it just sounds like the nadaswaram with a more fusion-ish feel. The same movie had some really soulful songs like En Kaadhalae and Anjali, all rendered awesomely by SPB. But Mettu Podu is the feel-good song in the album, and no matter how many times I listen to it, it only seems to get better.
• Margazhi Poove from May Madham: Sonali Kulkarni’s debut. Movie’s about a young girl yearning to be free from her overbearing father and a stuttering fiance. And this song is where she talks about all the things she’d love to do, while on a morning walk. This song had the suprabhatam as its opening…. gives the song a really good feel. The whole zest for life and freshness Sonali Kulkarni is supposed to have in the movie is reflected in this one song.
• Signore Signore from Kannathil Muthamittaal: People might like Vellai Pookal for its social message about peace and all, or adore Jayachandran’s soulful rendition of the title track. I however can’t get this song out of my head. The baila tunes and Sinhalese words demand to run through my head atleast once a day. It’s stock baila, just like Surangani, and possibly many other songs in the genre, but the cheerful mood of the song stands out against the serious mood of the rest of the movie. It’s the current song stuck in my head.
• Pettai Rap from Kaadhalan: This song needs no introduction, does it? I like the lyrics too… deep philosophical ponderings about life and death… appropriate for a song to be sung at a funeral procession. And I have fond memories of this song from school when our seniors choreographed it awesomely for the annual day, transvestite and all.
• Allay Allay from One Two Ka Four: Sad movie, sad SRK, boring Juhi Chawla, irritating kids, silly villain. And this cute song comes along. I’ve never watched the video ever. Just as well, I guess… I’ve had it upto here being disappointed by insipid videos for great songs.
• Paarkaathey Paarkaathey from Gentleman: Yet another let’s-live-life-and-have-fun song sung by a funloving girl. And this singer was called Minmini – with such a cool singer with such a cool name, which teenaged girl wouldn’t love this one? Turns out my bathroom-singing-neighbor-akka definitely did. I hadn’t met this much-older girl ever… she stayed in the next street, her house was behind mine, and I could hear her sing in the bathroom. I used to hate this girl because she sang classical songs in the bathroom very well, prompting mom to begin comparisons… and then one day she begins to sing this song… and thus became my first pop idol. I don’t think I’ve seen her, ever. But her 8 am voice singing Mangta Hai and Maragathavalli manasasmarami with the same zest continues to be an inspiration, more than a decade since I heard it last.
• Nila Kagirathu from Indira: Suhasini Mani Ratnam’s directorial debut. It had some extremely Suhasini-ish lines in the screenplay. And no, that is not a compliment. The tagline was very Suhasini too: Idhu peNNin kadhaialla, idhu maNNin kadhai – This isn’t the story of a girl, it is the story of the land. I didn’t much understand the movie, but the music was godawesome. Back then, Arvind Swamy was still goodlooking, if a bit chubby, and his intro song was good enough to keep humming every now and then. And then there was one patriotic one picturized on Anu Haasan and a bunch of schoolchildren. But Nila Kagirathu was the one that made the most impact. The more famous version was a little girl singing it.. on her own, and not because a band of aunts and grannies tempted her with promises of chocolates, unlike me. I dreaded being in the room when the song/video played – some or the other adult would invariably compare the girl singing with me and say ‘You should also sing like her’. My biggest doubt back then was how could this little girl, all of six years old, manage a tanpura without letting the whole thing fall down with a spectacular crash that left its bottom broken and top mutilated.
• Strawberry Kannae from Minsara Kanavu: Known to some as Strawberry Aankhen from Sapnay, but I listened more to the Tamil version. It sort of reminds me of Bohemian Rhapsody… is this what is opera? I liked the video, too. Kajol never looked more beautiful and more confident when she was listing out to Prabhudeva why she’d rather be a nun than be married and baked in an oven. And never more pissed off than when he makes a comment about her nose. I preferred this one over Kajol’s intro track where she’s trekking and having some girlie fun… the song wasn’t so awesome, or Vennilavae…. though that’s a fine track.
• Aye Ajnabi from Dil Se: Flawless. The title track comes close, but I don’t like the ending chorus…. I totally hate the ending chorus that Rahman adds to his songs when he can’t think of a decent way to wind it up. That apart, apparently Mani Ratnam made Priety Zinta a Malayalee solely because Rahman was hearing some awesome Mapilla tunes in his head… and there you go, you got Jiya Jale.
• Veerapandi Kottayile from Thiruda Thiruda: Folksy song with a Rahman feel. The background instruments, and Chitra’s strong vocals make this song awesomer than the others on the soundtrack – Thee Thee and Chandalekha.
  
• Ishq Bina from Taal: Anuradha Sriram did an awesome job here. Actually, the whole arrangement is so awesome, and all the instruments and vocalists seem so perfect – be it the solos by Anuradha Sriram (who sings impromptu in her interviews for the silliest of reasons even when no one asks her to, so much that you feel like asking her to just shut up for godsake… and you don’t for once feel like asking her to shut up in this song) and Sonu Nigam, or the chorus by Rehman and some others.  And they didn’t mutilate the video, thank god.
• Dheeme Dheeme from 1947-Earth: One of the best romantic songs I’ve heard. Made better by the soundclip of a bird singing in the background. Of course, it was all integrated into the song and all that – there’s a musical instrument synchronized to play when the bird stops to breathe. Though… I like birdsong in a track better in Blackbird by The Beatles… the bird just sings in the end, it’s not synchronized and all.
• Des Mere from The Legend of Bhagat Singh: It really sounds patriotic, the tune atleast. I don’t know how he does it. I like this track much better than Maa Tujhe Salaam, maybe because I hear Maa Tujhe Salaam so much and so often I’m tired of it. Or maybe because Des Mere is a much better track. Just listening to it gives me goosebumps. I also liked Jogiya Jogiya from the same soundtrack – it was much better than the Jogiya Jogiya in the Deol version of Bhagat Singh.
• Dol Dol from Aayutha Ezhuthu/Yuva: You can’t do anything with this song except listen to it. Which makes it a perfect song for a montage. It might initially sound jarring on the nerves, but if you watch the video, it seems to fit it very well, like nothing else could have. Which is a lot more than I can say for Fanaa in the same movie – awesome song, awesome beats, and it’s ruined by the video which is too slow and can’t seem to keep up with the pace of the song and the passion it conveys. Plus, in the Hindi version, you had Kareena and Vivek Oberoi, who don’t look like teenyboppers and that ruins the whole song for you. Though if you want to go by video alone, Hey Goodbye Nanba is the best of the lot… man, does that even look like Marina beach?
• Yaaro Yaarodi from Alaipayuthey: So artfully out of tune – it’s actually quite in-tune, but sounds like it’s being sung out of tune. So much that people actually think it is meant to be sung out of tune, and mangled beyond recognition. By the time this soundtrack came out, Rahman was pretty famous even outside South India… I was pleasantly surprised when, on a train to Delhi, I found this five-year-old Bihari kid singing this song.

Uh…. don’t I seem to have missed out something? I can see purists and Rahman devotees going “How Could You?!’. No, I haven’t forgotten or overlooked it. I was merely saving the best for the last.

• Chinna Chinna Aasai from Roja: When this came out, it was the only audio tape I possessed, and I listened to it till it wore out. And I used to wait all week for Chitrahaar and a couple of other shows, waiting through all the tacky songs of those days, just to watch the video of this song. Somehow watching Madhoo talk about all her little-little wishes made my day a bit better. And the colourful video with no overweight hero-heroine attempting to tease each other silly or make out in secret was so refreshing… maybe it was all the natural beauty. And the cute things they showed Madhoo doing was so new to us – playing in water, holding a baby goat… and then the video has this shot of a little boat floating in the stream, with a little light in it. I don’t know what it was, but I totally loved that particular shot, and wouldn’t take my eyes off the screen till I saw it. Even now when I watch the video, I wait just to watch that particular shot.

So what is it that sets Rehman apart? He experiments and innovates. Which you don’t see very often. He takes bits and pieces from everywhere and puts them together and packages them in a way that most people find very appealing – all of them have a yuppie ’90s feel alongside which they also sound new and futurish – which appeals to the looking-to-get-globalized generation of the ’90s who wanted to break free from the mould of tacky Indian film music while not really wanting to listen only to Indian Classical or sticking with only Michael Jackson and GnR. His compositions favored singers with younger, lighter voices over the heavy-voiced singers Bollywood had seen till then, and as a result, the youth identified more with these songs.

And Rehman was also at the right place at the right time. Other composers might have innovated, or introduced new sounds in the past, but they weren’t equipped with a Moog Synthesizer (his father owned the first one in India) back then. Cable television was breaking ground, thus making any and every sort of film music accessible to everyone who owned a TV set. And the music video was beginning to take shape. Which meant, Rehman’s songs were also nicely picturized, and more appealing. People also had more money to spend on music and movies.

And this was also the era when the Western world began to see India as a hot market and so all of a sudden, you had India all over the globe – beauty queens, films winning international awards, or atleast getting worldwide attention – mostly thanks to the diaspora abroad, and… our composers getting to make music with Andrew Lloyd Weber. I don’t mean to trivialize the achievements of ARR, but it was more a question of being at the right place at the right time than most other things. Talent did matter, of course, coz otherwise you’d also have Harris Jeyraj or Yuvan Shankar Raja or Jatin-Lalit attaining the same level of fame.

This was an era when we were gaining self-confidence as a nation, and who better than Rahman to serenade us through it, and provide us our clairon calls, our march songs, our war-cries, our wake-up calls, our joyous shouts when we win and our inspiring power ballads to not give up when we lose by a whisker?

He was our official provider of melodies for all occurrences from waking up (Margazhi Poove) to going to bed (Rukmani Rukmani), all occasions from weddings (Mangalyam Thanthunanena) to anti-wedding requests (Kariye na) to  funerals (Pettai Rap, or if you prefer mellower, Luka Chupi), realizations of love (Kandukondain Kandukondain) or cries of desperation (Evano Oruvan), secrets to success (song of the same name from Boys) or when you’ve lost everything (Vidu Kathaiyo), dancing in the rain (Thenmerku paruvakattu) or dancing in expectation of rain (Ghanan Ghanan), frustration with the system (Break the rules) or praying for good luck (O Paalanhaare) gender war (Boys-a yaenga vekkadhey) or cheerful rebellion (Paarkathey Paarkathey), flirty serenades (Signore Signore) or serious declarations of love (Nahin Saamne)… he’s such an integral part of our lives and everyone loves him for that.

If you don’t believe me on the last one, google for “I hate AR Rahman’ or variations of that, and all you’ll get is stuff like “I hate him because he doesn’t compose music for all movies’ or “I hate him because his music is so lovely it makes me cry’.

Women’s Day

Went for a Women’s Quiz conducted for Women’s Day by KQA. It was held right after BizKashi – the Biz Quiz. There were only five teams, so there wasn’t even a need to conduct prelims.

I didn’t originally intend to attend the Women’s Quiz… the Biz Quiz was supposed to be the relaunch quiz of my quiz team from school… nope, I’m not going to lapse into memories here, don’t worry. Great quiz, though I must say I’m rusty… obviously didn’t make it to the finals. Enjoyed being part of the audience… it was a fun quiz to attend. A good set of questions, very well set.

And… I enjoyed it more than the tailored-for-women’s-day-and-women Women’s Quiz. Basically it was because of the sort of quizzing I like. I have a bad memory, and hence I don’t much like questions like ‘Identify [enter image of obscurish person/movie]‘, but absolutely adore questions of the form [first para of wiki article with named entities replaced by random letters of the alphabet], or [obscure question common answer].

The quiz in itself was torn between being a Women’s Day Quiz and a Quiz for Women. I was half-expecting to be asked about the common term for Fuller’s Earth (Multani Mitti), or the history of the woman on who Miranda Priestly’s character was based on, now that would have been fun…. but no, it was about boring overachieving women who did inspiring but boring things like win the Nobel.

But frankly… I didn’t get the need for such a difference between the two quizzes. Was it set that way because of some research that proves women are better at recollecting stuff while men are better in working out and analyzing? Or is ‘identify’ seen as being easier than ‘work out’, and women being inferior in quizzing when compared to men need an easier time?

Which brings us to another point I wish to bring attention to… why do so few women quiz? As far as I’ve seen, it’s a matter of priorities and interest… at NITK, most girls were more focussed on a lot of activities which weren’t involved in quizzing and hence there was a low turnout… but why is that? In a population of 250-odd girls in B.Tech, only one or two at max would be interested? Wonder why?

And so it is Women’s Day. Lots of lip-service for women’s rights and all that yada… I’m frankly bored, but I acknowledge extreme-feminists should definitely exist for a healthy society…. just as extreme leftists and rightists should.

What I understand of feminism is this. Basically, for long, women weren’t supposed to think. And had very few choices to make. And as we know, people with fewer choices to make are happier people…. so this arrangement seemed to suit everyone. Then came feminism, suffragette movement and suchlike things. They wanted to get women to think. To not be afraid to think. They wanted women to be independent. Take their own decisions.

But well, they intentionally or unintentionally forgot one tiny detail. That you have to take responsibility for yourself and any decision you take. And there you go. Now you have a bunch who believe in power without responsibility. They forget that being an independent woman doesn’t entitle you to perks, apart from those that come out of sensitivity and common sense. They forget that misandry is equivalent to misogyny.

And then things like Mona Lisa Smile. The movie starring Julia Roberts. I don’t much have an issue with it, but with the people who idolize it. Why do ‘progressive’ women tend to look down upon those women who’ve chosen family over career? That’s what feminism was all about, right? To be able to choose as well as to increase the number of choices? And such a choice is something personal, like religion… you shouldn’t be judged on it… and like innerwear – it’s a matter of what’s most comfortable. And not everyone wants pink.

That said, when I ask “What do you do?’ and I receive an answer like ‘I’m bringing up the future of the world’, it does strike me very much as some sort of a consolationPrize answer. Or an excuse for being lazy. I don’t have an issue with others giving up career for family… just that I don’t like the phrasing.

I’ve met some teenaged girls whose aim in life is to “get married and settle down’ (No, they are not villagers, but from very well-off families where their parents want them to become lawyers and consultants, and are willing to foot the tuition for all of that)… I’m not an advocate of that, just to clarify. No matter what you’ll say about parenting being a fulltime job, if you find time hanging heavy on your hands while waiting for kids to come back from school…. you need a life. Just like I’ll say you need a life if you say you’re very busy and don’t have time to look at your kids’ faces.

A couple of months back, I was watching some of the Pan-IIT videos. One of them was about the low numbers of women in Sci-Tech. The problem is basically that most organizations aren’t women-friendly. More often than not, it’s ignorance and perspective that’s the trouble. Like take for example this situation. Woman’s on a critical project near the deadline. Work goes on till pretty late. Woman’s family doesn’t much like the whole staying late and nightouting. Woman feels work is such and asking for concessions would be un-feministic. Woman understands concern of family and gives in. Woman is seen as putting family over career. Woman given low priority during promotions and the like.

Now there’s definitely a holistic approach that’ll work for everyone, but the problem is no one’s going to begin thinking that way unless they are told to…. not coming across women in the workspace for long doesn’t much equip you well to be sensitive to women in your workplace.

And one lady brought it up that IITs are generally unfriendly places as far as women are concerned. Her point was that it brought in the worst of all evils of society in a closed location. At NITK, I’ve come across the lowest forms of MCPness, the saddest forms of prejudice, the worst perceptions of women…. I can empathize.

A good number of men seem to agree – some openly, some not so openly – that women aren’t as smart as men. They go on as far as to say it might probably be the result of having two X chromosomes…. some sort of genetic modification that might have happened…. or maybe women were just meant to be dumb. Oh, and their justification when attacked is “I have never met a woman as smart as a man’. And when you do give some examples where a woman is indeed smarter than most men around her, she is classified as a freak of nature, or her character and means of obtaining success is debated upon. These are not people from the Sri Rama Sene, but just regular engineering college students not necessarily from a feudal background.

Muthalik is just one of those men who shout out their opinion on women in public. There are tons who share the opinion, though silently. In that way, Muthalik is not the problem, but one of the symptoms of a much larger problem…. other symptoms include tame, yet dangerous private opinions like mentioned before.

Most of the issues are due to lack of communication and empathy and sensitivity. IMO, sensitization should be a mandatory part of syllabus (rhetoric… not to be taken literally), considering the backgrounds of most people who enter IITs and NITs. The problems that occur here occur less in places with more balanced gender ratios. And that’s why we need to improve the gender ratio in Sci-Tech. To prevent the objectification and stereotyping of women from festering.

We also need more women who are roleModel-material. Comments like the one above occur due to a dearth of these. If all the women you’ve grown up seeing are simpering nagging housewives, or chammak challo sorts, chances are high you’ll assume all women are either one of the two or freaks of nature. And that is irrespective of your gender.

But frankly, I’d not be giving the complete picture if I didn’t say that at NITK, I’ve also come across some of the nicest, most empathetic, most accomodating and most sensitive men I’ve ever met… and I’m a much better, happier person for it.

Innonsense.

A long time back, I had expressed concern at what kids would do after Rowling outed Dumbledore. But a while later, it struck me children have their own ways of filling up gaps that result from grown-ups not telling them things… like this little girl I know who came across the term ‘sugar daddy’ in a TV review of Cheeni Kum automatically assumed that the term meant a dad who got his kids lots of sweets.

When grown-ups grow tired of the constant barrage of questions, they simply quit trying to make answers up and ask the curious kids to “go study”, or “check on the dog” or “see if the front door is latched and the stove is turned off”.

This creates a mystique around the grown-up facets of life.The sort which begets a sneak-sneak-giggle-giggle reaction.

I find kids can’t quite resist a smile when you say you’re going to teach them mensuration. Back in the HIV scare years in ’96 and ’97, a teacher just had to mention the word ‘aids’ (even hearing-aids, or teaching aids) to have meaningful looks pass around the classroom. So I don’t quite know what one lady was thinking when she said to a class full of curious pre-teens that she would start the new topic once Sir who taught the other section passed her the aids.

And the news channels talked about prevalence of HIV among sexworkers. For some reason I confused it with social workers and was perplexed because I thought the virus didn’t spread through casual contact, and was shocked that it spread to people who took care of patients, too. And what’s more, spread THROUGH them.

And disambiguating between the two was another issue…. when there were interviews of social workers on NDTV, I marvelled at their bravery at coming out on TV when the very thing they did was illegal.

And this mystique makes kids wonder if everything around them has a double meaning, and if everything in the world was in some way or the other related to procreation.

Like I was reading a book review in The Hindu (I must have been 11 or so then) where I came across the phrase, “a seminal work”. In that environment where the current topic of discussion was the truth about the birds and the bees, curiosity knowing no limits, and newer facts and phrases being unearthed everyday and shared, irrespective of the grown-ups’ indifference, I naturally assumed it must have something to do with bodily fluids. And passed on that piece of wisdom to others who promptly added it to the list of nudge-nudge-wink-wink words. And no, I never did refer to the dictionary, as one English teacher of mine said it was a bad habit to constantly keep referring to the dictionary while reading… and you should derive meaning from context. Though.. it was much beyond me to understand whether the word was a compliment or not.

But I guess that was a one-off incident.  There was a grown-up conversation going on around me once between my mother and an uncle, about the Tamil movie Mahanadi. Now I hadn’t seen much of this movie, coz it being a Kamal movie with grotesque theme as usual (this was wayy before his bunch of family-oriented comedies), my mother would not let me watch it. She mentioned that Kamal Haasan goes away to jail, and his daughter becomes a woman-of-ill-repute to sustain herself. “Great career choice, no?” I brightly asked my uncle. “Why do you think so?”, he asked… evidently there was more to this. “What are you saying?” asked mum. “I think it’s a great career choice… you need so much of skills. My friend XYZ is thinking of becoming one herself… she’s so good at debates and arguing. Ma, you might be prejudiced, but you’ve got to admit it’s a necessary profession. I’m pretty sure you can be one without resorting to underhand techniques… all your nonsense about lawyers being liars…”

And they burst out laughing… I’d confused the word ‘prosecutor’ with the similar-sounding word my uncle had uttered.

Twenty-five Random things about me you probably didn’t know…

…And probably didn’t care about. But here it is. I don’t know what to write – about suggestions for marketing Rahul Gandhi election posters (Single, half-Italian, with dimples)? Or a collection of anti-Slumdog outpourings? Or Rehman-vs-Ilayaraja? Or how totally awesome I found the opening scene of Guddi? The answer is none of the above. I’m feeling extremely self-indulgent, so here goes.

1. I work well both in the early morning as well as late at night. Or make that can-stay-awake.
2. I remember insane little details about people which they themselves don’t notice or care enough about to remember.
3. And yet, I forget what you said two minutes back.
4. I have talons.
5. I think Python’s the best language in the world, never mind its weakly typedness. That said, I seem to like Not The Nine O’Clock News better than Monty Python.
6. I have a knack of digging up embarassing stuff about people.
7. I love attempting image quizzes using nothing but the Internet.
8. My favourite sort of quiz questions are those which sound obscure but have as their answer a relatively common name/place/animal/thing as the answer… the sort of answer which has you going ‘ohhhhhhhhhhhh’ when you hear it. I find them very entertaining when posed in those quizzes that attract hordes of spectators.
9. Contrary to popular perception, I don’t think hard rock/heavy metal is the best/only music in the world. I’m crazy-as-hell about retro, Great American Songbook, Carnatic…. and I don’t much like Hindustani. I worship The Beatles, Dylan, Queen and Ella Fitzgerald. And my favourite Beatle is George Harrison. I hate Lennon. Especially for what he did to Cynthia and Julian. That said, I thought Cynthia Lennon’s book on her travails was a sad attempt at writing.
10. I wanted to dye my hair a violent shade of pink or purple. I had to drop the idea due to the hard water of NITK Hostels.
11. I think too much about most things in life. Nothing escapes my extreme dissection.
12. Due to which I’m a very paranoid person.
13. Though I’m not very good at it, I’m rather proud of my freestyle.
14. It occasionally happens that when I suddenly remember a song I haven’t listened to in ages, within a day or two, I get to listen to it in some way or the other [which doesn't involve me looking for the track and playing it]. Or, someone mentions that track in conversation and says it’s been ages since we listened to it, hasn’t it?
15. I read and re-read old issues of Tinkle. I never get bored.
16. I read and re-read older issues of Readers’ Digest. I never get bored.
17. I don’t think (self)declarations of genius are license to be rude and condescending.
18. When I say something, I strive to be as complete and logical as is humanly possible in constructing my arguments and in putting it across in a way the other person will understand. It is quite a different matter I don’t succeed at times.
19. I cannot write fiction for nuts. My story construction might be excellent if at all, and my choice of words great, but I can never get the correct level of detail to go into. So my first paragraphs are always full of insane detail, reading which I get bored and quit writing that piece.
20. I can at times get totally lost in conversation. A few readers might remember an unnecessary pre-dinner walk in Mangalore in my final year.
21. In total contrast to what I was like at college, I actually like an orderly life with a fixed routine. And clean surroundings.
22. In total contrast to what I might come across as, I’m no feminist.
23. When people ask me about my seemingly irrational behaviour, I more often than not seem to be citing Life at NITK as one of the chief reasons behind that behaviour. Like… “You listen to music while you work?’  ‘Yeah…. one of those habits I developed at NITK when I wanted to block out all distractions’.
24. I get irritated by a lot of things. Fake accents are one of them. Ill-constructed arguments are another.
25. And I don’t think any self-description can ever be complete or accurate. What I notice about most people is that whatever is said about them, more often than not, even the opposite is true.