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A Appealing B Brainy H Helpful A Amazing G Glamorous A Ambivalent Name / Username: he he, well now I have something to live upto actually :P

I often wonder how strange our brain is and the strangest part seems to be our memory. In technical terms, our memory is what we computer scientists call "Content Addressable Memory". So we do not actually need to know where exactly in our brain, something is stored. We just think of some related thing or about some part of the thing and the whole thing comes rushing forth. Now sometimes these associations are very obvious and at other times, quite bewildering. They also tend to differ from person to person. I listen to music a lot and I have found that I can infact draw up a very nostalgic map of my life in terms of songs. Everytime I listen to some of the songs, they bring back memories of gone times and at times they are so vivid that I can hardly contain my emotions. I feel happy or sad or peaceful just like I am living that moment again. It is a wonderful feeling to say the least. Some of the prominent ones are (though I doubt they will make any sense to anybody apar...

Getting busy as July is coming up. So no time to write critical reviews of everything if I want to do as many things as I used to. Well I am being a little selfish here but can't help it. So in the meanwhile only small lists will be coming up here: Books: finished "Daddy long legs" by Jean Webster. A quick and easy read but 1) is meant for children and 2) is quite outdated (was published in 1915). Reading "The best of Satyajeet Ray". Most of the stories are for children but some are rather mature in tone. Movies: I can't believe I forgot to write an entry for "The Whale Rider". Take my word and watch it today. One of the few movies which brought me to tears. Also saw "Trainspotting" and I was not disappointed inspite of the fact that I was waiting to see it since quite sometime now. Music: Right now its GreenDay and GreenDay with some Hootie and the Blowfish in between. GreenDay is just awesome especially their first album Dookie...

Hum-Tum is cute and funny. Nice for some light hearted entertainment. Both Rani and Saif has become seasoned actors and are a treat to watch :). One disheartening factor was that ultimately this movie also turned out to be a copy of "Harry met Sally" which I have not seen yet and so I enjoyed Hum-Tum. However it is sad that even all the good Hindi Movies turn out to be inspired from some foreign movie. For the record: (Not personally verified since I have not seen the English ones) Ghulam: On the Water Front Munna Bhai MBBS: Patch Adams Hum Tum: Harry Met Sally Mohabbaten: Dead Poet's Society (my loathing for Mohabbatein increased quite a lot after watching the original English one) even paap, the debut movie of Pooja Bhatt the director draws inspiration from many movies including "the witness" among others.

I have been promising myself that I'll post something here, whole last week. There are a couple of issues I have been thinking about but as usual, I have been breaking these promises with almost marvelous consistency :( The reading dept is going weak now a days. Have only read 1-2 short stories by Satya Jeet Ray in all of last week and these stories are surprisingly modern. I mean very much different from the impression I had but this will be the issue of another post when I am done reading the collection. In the meantime I watched HP3 and hated it. The book was way too better. I am quite at a loss at understanding the applauds it seems to be getting by the critics and viewers. They have left out almost everything from the story. Considering the size of HP4 and HP5, I doubt what is going to be their fate :(. The lead actors overact most of the time save for Ms. Granger. She is beginning to look nice and is okey in the acting dept also. Hope to see more of her outside the HP s...

Finished "Interpreter of Maladies" today. Considering the fact that it has only 9 stories, it should have been a one day affair but I never managed to take out that one day. Instead I read it 1-2 stories a day after every 3-4 days. Now that I finally finished it with a marathon of 4 stories today, I think I enjoyed it much more by reading in parts, taking time to reflect on the stories as I read them. So the next obvious thing: the best story on the collection. Well I'll rather not chose one best but I liked "Temporary Measure", "Interpreter of Maladies", "Sexy" and "Third and the Last Continent". A very striking feature of the stories is that they are very rich in details. Unlike Arundhati Roy, whose plush language is a treat to read, or just behold for that matter, Jhumpa is all about details. Specially the details about food !! I could almost taste it in my mouth. And think about my plight when I had to go and eat mess foo...

The hostel messes in IITK are lately being refurnished and they have got this new self service system in place now. Also the old row based sitting system is gone and there are many smaller tables. So u are free to sit wherever u want and with ur friends. I find it a welcome change from the regular sit-in-the-order-eat-in-quantums style. During summers, students from other hostels (Hall 5) are also eating in hall 2 mess. Now there is a strange thing I have seen. Some of them just leave their plates on the tables after eating and since I have heard this myself, it is not that they forget to do it. For some of them, it is an unacceptable idea that they are supposed to pick up their plates and put them to sink/trolly. I am quite amazed since I have always felt that the old practice of leaving ur plates on the tables in the mess was actually pretty bad. Since my childhood I have learned to go and put my plate in the sink. In fact letting somebody else pick up my plate (read my mom or my sis...

ha, before I forget, I'll put it down this time. I listened to this song from "Akele hum,akele tum" and was thinking from where it is inspired. Finally today, the puzzle was solved. The song "Aisa zakhm diya hai" is inspired from "Child in Time" by Deep Purple :). And for that matter "Mera dil tere liye, dhadakta hai" from Ashiqui is inspired form John Farnham's "You're the Voice" which incidently is quite a nice song, one which u should listen to !! Watched "Whale Rider" and "Kill Bill 2". Will write about them sometime later. Also made my first mix tape :). I'll have to think if I should make it public :P

My Bloginality is ENFP !!! "As an ENFP, you are Extraverted, iNtuative, Feeling , Perceiving. This makes your primary focus on Extraverted Intuition with Introverted Feeling. This is defined as a NF personality, which is part of Carl Jung's Idealist (Identity Seeking) type, and more specifically the Champions or Inspirer. As a weblogger, you may not be consistant in posts. Although, if you find a specific focus on their journal or a very flexible manner of writing, it may be more fufilling. Because you are warm and see so many posibilities in life, you may inspire others to follow in your footsteps with a journal." -copied with due respect and reference from here Though I think it to be a bit of a fraud in the sense that the questions in the test are too direct and in a sense provide everything that they later tell me. But what the heck, they are fun :) and anyway I would like everybody to read what they have to say about me :P. So go ahead click that link !! ...

Seems like this is a love-hate day. Listened to tatu just now for the first time. Everything, the music, the vocals is pretty ordinary. Still, I don't know why but it stirs my heart. Watched the video "All the things she said" and they feel just so right together. I am amazed that I am even writing this but the chemistry between the girls looks awesome. May be I need to take chm101 again :( Song of the Moment: Liquid by "Jars of Clay". One of those songs which just get on ur tongue and mind and won't go. So *singable* if there is any such word :).

Though I hate chain mails and this thing happens to be a slight variation of the same, I'll do it anyway. The job is to: 1. Grab the nearest book 2. Open the book to page 23 3. Find the fifth sentence 4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions and what I found nearest to me was "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri and the sentence 5 on page 23 says: "In March, Dacca had been invaded,torched and shelled by the Pakistani army." Not very interesting, is it? What a pity that such a boring sentence would come up from such a lovely book but such is life :)

Last 15 days have been extra ordinary. Unfortunately, all I can do to give u an idea is show u following lyrics: Everytime that I look in the mirror All these lines on my face gettin’ clearer The past is gone It went by like dust to dawn Isn’t that the way Everybody’s got their dues in life to pay I know what nobody knows Where it comes and where it goes I know it’s everybody’s sin You got to lose to know how to win Half my life is in books’ written pages Live and learn from fools and from sages You know it’s true All the things come back to you Sing with me, sing for the years Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears Sing with me, if it’s just for today Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away (x2) Dream on, dream on Dream yourself a dream come true Dream on, dream on Dream until your dream come true Dream on, dream on, dream on... Sing with me, sing for the years Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears Sing with me, if it’s just for...

Today we, some members of the BRiCS group, made a trip to Bithoor on Bi-cycles. AM also came along with us and as I watched him riding bi-cycle, swimming in ganges, buying tarbooj from a farmer and later treating us all to a self-made lunch at his house, I thought of what I want from life and though I do not know the answer, all the above things are definitely in. Well musings apart, the trip was fun. I along with one more guy tried to pull off a prank on the junta but guess what? The worse happened.. not a single soul noticed :( . We ate lots of dahi bada, tarbooj, kheera, played some antakshari, went boating, came back to eat more kheera, play more antakshari and then the best ending that was possible: took the ride back in the car with bi-cycle loaded behind :). In the middle of all this, at one point of time, watched a flamingo. They are so beautiful and big. Easily the biggest bird I have ever seen. Incidently I seem to have placed my hands on another interesting thing :). ...

Exactly 4 years, 4 months before, something happened and my life has never been the same again. I got my iitk login in January, 2000 and on 2nd May 2004 i.e. today, at 5:30 pm it stopped working :(. Although I am still trying to get it back somehow, I know within my heart that finally this is the time. Time to move on. Time to leave the familiar and comfortable territories of pine, linserv and apah. And what is gone was not just a login. It was a treasure house of memories. It had so earnestly brought me good news and also delivered the worst of them. News about my loved ones, news about those close to me and news from those whom I may never meet in my whole life. For 4 long years it kept stuff so important to me, safely inside with utmost care.. just like an old trusted friend !! I guess nothing else in the whole IITK becomes more closely associated with a person than his login. Almost half of the junta is known to others by their login names. In particular, for one last year d...

Finished Harry Potter 3 today. For me, the emotional appeal of the book is so high that I can happily ignore the slightly weak storyline towards the end. The whole time machine funda looked a little ill fitted but the thing that bowled me over were the mooney,wormtail, padfoot and prongs. Those are some cool sounding nicks. And I liked them so much that I am seriously considering a change from abhaga :)

Well it happened again. First with Ms. Roy and now with Mr. Yadav. Both of them represent the line of thought that I could not more disagree with. In particular, I have become so disgusted with the blubbering of Mr. Yadav in the so called "editoriaI section" of Hans that I consider it to be the misfortune for a magazine like Hans which traces back its origin to writers like Munshi Premchand that it should have him as editor. But today I read a story in Kadambini magazine. They have a series where some big shots of Hindi Literature present one of their fav. stories along with some comments and this time Rajinder Yadav has hit bullz eye. The series has carried some excellent stories in the past but the one it carries this time is a master piece. It is "Bhediye" by Bhuvenashwar who is also supposed to be the the father of Hindi Ekanki. Somehow I cannot remember having heard this name before but he is definitely high on my To read list now. And I can give Mr. yadav ...

The following comes form the stint at live journal. What do u do when everything seems to be fitting right in place except you? Do u fight or do u succumb? What do u do when everybody around u is being so nice that u begin to feel like a high head? Time to adjust the perspective or time to introspect? Just where do u draw the line? just when u start looking in ur own self? And do these answers come from within or I have to be more attentive? And on a side note: Tonic is really tonic. I just love "If u could only see". Check it out !!

okey, so this needs to be announced to the world. The celebrated physicist Stephan Hawking is also a gangasta rapper and has 3 studio albums to his credit !! The band is known as MCHawking and is not at all proper for kids :P. Okey well it is a hoax but u have to have a look at MCHawking just for the sheer amount of the work that has been put into it and for the fact that I actually believed it at first :(

Man gets tired spirit don't Man surrenders spirit won't Man crawls spirit flies Spirit lives when man dies Man seems spirit is Man dreams the spirit lives Man is tethered spirit free What spirit is man can be -- "Spirit" by WaterBoys Lovely lyrics though I was not that impressed with the song but will sure check out more of them.

So I am back after a long time. Had a brief stint of blogging at live journal but the lure of 1 GB has brought me back to this realm of comment less blogging. Not that I got any comments at livejournal anyway but still :) So life has changed much in the past 4 months or rather it has not changed at all as it was expected to be. I am still trying to be sane through this all. BTW, Hobbit, though it took long, is finally done and I am midway in Prisoner of Azkaban. In the meantime, I had a go at the short stories by Aacharya Chatur Sen Shastri and now I have become a ardent fan of the man. A great Scholar and lovely writer though u may at times feel bogged down with the amount of information he hurls at you most of which just flies in the face of things you must have learnt since childhood. So for starters, short stories are recommended. BTW, they are generally about the old rajas and riyasats and their honour and pride. So now u know what are u looking for :) Music !! Well I guess...