En kanmani, un kadhali - song with a difference

Songs are a good source of linguistic nuances as well as nuances in thoughts. To say the truth, I learn most of my Tamil from songs.I love this particular song 'En kanmani un kadhali' from Tamil movie of the 70s for its music and the way its sung and of course, the way its portrayed. Thanks to youtube for allowing me to watch and re-watch the song umpteen times that powered me to blog on it.

The song starts with the pair of lovers fixedly gazing each other while travelling in a local town bus. Suddenly an clone of each of them start with the verses (Read it as: two of them in their own world). The song explores on the way the two in their own world interacts with the real world including their own real self. The song is written, sung and directed in such a way that four of them sing the song at few places. I think the individual singer voices were not mixed ( two track: one for the real world, one for the clone)

Here is the link to the youtube video

A project well planned - 10 years ago

I often recollect those days busy preparing for the 12th grade exam,

31Dec '2K, the JEE results, shattered dreams as I entered 2001... I opened the text books, the scent of fresh paper wafting through the air with the taste of tears spreading in my tongue.

One phone call to my aunt, and my aunt arrived at coimbatore...

No consolations were told, we all dropped in for a comedy movie.
Back home,she took 3 days to assess the syllabus and plan the course of study for tackling the public exams. She had infact prepared a 45 day plan for the project. The plan included activities not only for me, but for my mom, sis and papa as well.

My sis quicly learnt cooking, father did all the supervision of the house, so that mom could supervise my study plan.

This was indeed a project well planned, well supervised by my mom and well supported by my sis and papa.

...
...
...

This was ten years ago. I feel the the way time rolls on...inevitable passage of time :)

linked...yet lonely

Endless list of friends, known, once known, just seen, unknown...the list is really endless and thats social networking all about. The sites offer a voyueristic pleasure of intruding into someone else's private life and this keeps them in business.

I think its like the narcotics...once addicted you crave for it, more and more. I met a college kid while travelling to Tiruchirappali. Six hour journey by bus, I killed time mostly by watching this kid's activity. He had a mobile application hooked on to the networking sites and he was into his own customised world. In the mobile-network fringe areas, when the data got disrupted, he got so frustrated and restless in his seat. He was into a virtual world where one need not yearn or earn for pleasure. Once he said he had lots of friends, three hours later he said he was all alone!

Now who is to blame? The social network sites? users? society?

Ten promises to my dog...

Tamil and Japanese make me experience the role of languages in our daily lives. Language intertwines with day to day activities in your life, the way you think, act and respond to external events. In short, they give a new perceptions to life. And as always Japanese movies make my eyes glee with tears at some instant of time. One such was 'Inu to watashi no 10 no yakusoku', meaning the ten promises between me and doggy.

Released in 2008, 'Ten promises to my dog' expresses the bonding between the girl and the dog. The film starts with the Akari, a young woman narrating her childhood with her 'socks'. Her mother names the newly found dog 'socks' since her feet resembles socks. The ten promises are the ones her mother tells Akari. True to her name, Akari is like the unending light that the whole universe looks into. The movie also captures the feelings of the girl as she grows up.

As with most of Japanese movies, patience is the key to finish watching the movie. At one point in time, Akari reminded me of Ritu, my mentor/ex-colleague's daughter and her puppy Randy. Lots of thoughts and memories spooled from their rusted reels...

Promises are not only for dog and you, but for any new relation you might enter into!, what do you say?

Happiness stealer

One forceful wish by an adamant guy...had he not done that, he would have been the wealthiest of all... (A real incident heard it in a different perspective!)

'Happiness stealer'; wishfully received out of God's creations...


**********************************
God said "NO, do not ask me to grant your wish!...enjoy your life..."

Our guy, a business magnet could entertain himself with anything he wished, but this wish of his could not be fulfilled by the vastness of his business empire.

After business hours, like a door-door salesman, he filled God's ears with his wish repeatedly.

God had only one answer "NO"

As with any business dealing, next he started threatening God.

God made him get more business so that this guy would not pester any further but in vain...

Business-man was adamant...and finally God fulfilled his wish...a girl child...

That was the day after when he lost all his happiness

As she grew, she stole happiness from people around her...all of them died grief stricken!

Now, even at the rim of life, she still loves stealing happiness from her spouse, son, and recently daughter-in-law, grandchild, huh...everyone.

She is sixty and still going on...

**********************************

ROADS....from sandy roads all the way again to sandy roads!!

Man cleared the bushes and paved a path to walk along safely. He evolved and when he invented the wheel and wheel carts, he made the path a little wider; this was circa 4 century BC. Slowly over the course of 2200 years wheels evolved in various facets when it met the engine technology and automobiles were created. This journey still continues and we have got n-lane roads made out of asphalt, concrete and recently plastics!

A step ahead we will be having roads that have photovoltaic underneath them and produce energy out of the sun all the day along. This is still in very pre-mature stage and prototypes are being carried out (http://solarroadways.com/). These roads are expected to have displays that would send our emergency information to the road users. More information on their construction is shared in their web-site.

Imagine such roads with loads of silicon circuitry underneath them...all sending out signals with a programmed purpose.

A system churning out engineers (a.k.a cheap labour)

Recently exposed bogus mark-sheet scandal in Tamil Nadu reinforces the point that our systems, processes and our mindset are not geared up to meet ethical standards, leave alone global competitive standards. This scandal has indeed exposed the greediness in us; the greediness for power that exists in all layers of a society.

Being an engineer thirty years ago was regarded something special and engineers were held in high respect then. But these days, an engineering degree is more common that every second person you meet from a middle-class and upward family is an engineer. Five years ago Tamil Nadu (TN) had 230 engineering colleges...almost half of what we have now. TN government abolishing the common entrance exam four years ago has forced students to vie even for 0.01 marks. For every decimated fraction of marks approaching the 100%, you have thousands of students competing. This is the case almost in any state though in varying proportions.

Though the rise of IT in India cannot be blamed fully for this situation, it has a equal role to play. As cheap goods from China are not the goods sought out for, engineers from India will soon become a chunk of cheap labour that the world will not seek out for...both of them will be used in day-to-day life and will be dumped in the back-yard...

Learn it in your native tongue... in your own way !!

Four years from now we will see engineers with more concrete basics who had opted for studying in Tamil medium. Had there been no Tamil in the engineering entrance question paper side-by-side to English, I swear I would have score 2-3 marks less. Reading it in my native tongue increased my comprehending speed and avoided any ambiguous situation. I had then dreamed of studying engineering in Tamil, and now it is a reality. Yes, from this year onwards selected colleges will offer Civil and Mechanical streams in Tamil.

Some might argue that Tamil-engineers cannot cope up with the current industry which is services based. But at the end of the day what matters is how much of an engineer you are rather than how much of a communicator you express. It all depends on what people consider as success...Being an engineer or being a fluent English speaker. We can study the degree in Tamil and still learn to communicate in English, but not the other way round. When the whole world is embracing web2.0, Let's embrace this next step with pride.

A dangerous face lurking in the dark...

These days almost every other person you meet has a mail-id. Some people muse that internet gave addresses to millions who do not have a proper snail-mail address. Most of the mail-id owners these days have a networking site profile that says something about themselves, their hobbies, their likes and many more. The idea behind these personalized profiles is to help like minded people network. These profiles also aid in knowing more about the individual/owner but behold: there is always a dangerous face (an ugly face perhaps) that lurks behind these profiles.

Sakshi was pursuing her masters in industrial relations when she got a marriage proposal from a well known family. The guy held a masters degree in engineering and was working for a small firmware company abroad. Sakshi had a fine liking to arts and was adept in painting and playing the keyboard. She saw the guy’s profile and gathered that he played the flute and many more. While meeting in person, he too accepted that he played flute occasionally. Few months after marriage what Sakshi experienced was hell; I mean she experienced the truth. The guy actually had an opportunity to attend flute classes for three weeks when he was ten years old! Sakshi also found that each line item in his profile was wrong. His real face was ugly than what his profile conveyed. His hobby included reading, but he had never read a whole novel in his life. The ugly face posed a more dangerous face, a threatening one perhaps when she had to politely apply for divorce and put an end to the relation. But will the Indian society accept?

The incident happened a few years ago and this intrigued me to probe into profiles of few people whom I have met in office or elsewhere and found that an alarming number of profiles contain information that do not match with the real face of them. The irony is that almost 95% percent of Indians do not have a hobby or a past-time activity and their ego forces them to fill one in the profile. The one filled is probably the activity that their parents thrust upon them in their childhood.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

Not only on web-profiles, many fake their real identity as well...

Last Sunday I met Mr.Vel at a fair in Chennai. I had known this person earlier through a web group. Slowly the talk went into hobbies and he exclaimed that he was a great fan of Tamil language and his pastime was to update his blog. I commented back saying that his blog was last updated way back in 2008. He paused for a moment and weaved a story that all his writings were in paper and before I could ask further questions, he said he had lost all papers while shifting his house and left the place for a moment.

This reminded me of Sri, who joined with me in my previous company on the same day. He claimed that he was an expert in net technology, business, art, and many more. He also started bullying other guys in net-tech group and had a pleasure making him feel greater at the expense of others feelings.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

A listening ear...

While working in my previous company, I was posted in Chennai for three months. The office was located sixty kilometers south of Chennai city. I was staying in the company’s guest house nearby office forcing my schedule to guest house-office-guest house and nothing else. The day of diwali was approaching and I had got reservation only in a sitting coach in a train departing late afternoon, after all diwali is one such occasion when members of the family get-together.

My journey to the railway station would take little less than two hours and as planned, I left the office at 1pm. I had to postpone my lunch and board a bus to Tambaram. It was hot afternoon and I managed to get a seat in a few minutes next to a man in his late forties. He started talking…the way he grew-up in a family of sculptors, the reasons that forced him to come to Chennai, his two year life in Bangalore, the way he entered the welding practice, the way his college going son was sucking money to pay his mobile-phone expenses, the way everyone in their family rejoices during diwali, the importance of real work and so on. Slowly the conversation was heading towards rail-wagon and steel industry perspectives and opportunities/risks for the SMEs in this industry.

After fifteen-twenty minutes of this talk he became silent. He was looking into my eyes, smiling. A minute of pause and then he sadly expressed the way his pay-hike was hurt by crooked middle management politics and the way the word ‘recession’ has ate their bonus money paid before diwali. I smiled and I said him that this was the case everywhere, be it a big IT company or be it a small foundry and also said some few words that seemed to spread warmth inside his soul. Ten minutes later, his place came and before parting he thanked me for hearing to him and also a special thanks for my smile!

Meeting this man with no name and the conversation left me questioning myself. What people need from relations is a listening ear and a soul, and most of them think different. In the past paced lifestyle people have been drawn into a maze of unknown and fear that causes them to shrug off whatever is not them. Many hide their faces from their personal responsibilities as a friend or brother-sister or spouse or a parent as all these do not pay off in pecuniary terms or does not satisfy their dirty-ego. They consider this act of theirs as correct and thrust them unknowingly into their next generation as well.

Red vented bulbul - My first bird shoot

This Sunday, I woke up to the 8'o'clock sun filling the room. I was at my aunt's place at Trichy. Coming out of the house in a sombre mood, I gazed at the hibiscus blooms in the corner of the garden. Chirp chirp ... and three or four red vented bulbuls perched on the tree opposite to their house. My aunt was swift in fetching my camera and we both started watching them . The drooping bunch of yellow flowers fluttered by the bulbuls hopping between the fragile branches.

Two of them flew and perched on the fence wall. Earlier when I spotted these birds few months ago at Auroville-Pondicherry, I loved their shiny eyes and their colour. Today I consider myself lucky shooting these birds on my new camera.



PS: I got my new dslr camera last week ...canon eos-550d

The lost 8th mile...

A stretch covered by tamarind trees on both side of the road, a canal accompanies you for a couple of kilometers and banana plantations on the other side of the canal. Such a place is the 8th-mile canal bridge on the Trichy-Karur road. What I like so much about this place is the early morning mist during non-summer season. The mist engulfs the moving water and is motionless compared to the water flow. The water surface seems to be a slate of green glass before it plunges another foot deep after the bridge. The way the mist touches the flowing water is a good sight to see, slightly swirling at the edges

Usually this place, the 8th-mile canal bridge goes un-noticed when you are on the wheels and as the name goes, the inundation canal bridge is on the 8th mile towards Trichy from Kulithalai, a small town on the banks of river Kaveri. The canal swells with water during the monsoon / winter season and goes completely dry in summer.

Though the road in this section of the highway is bumpy, I eagerly look forward driving this section in the early morning hours for the sight of the 8th mile canal bridge. Ten days ago, while driving down, I thought, I missed this place, but later got to know that the whole section is now newly laid bypassing this place as a part of road-widening-project. I felt really sad missing this place this time. But I vow that the next time, I shall take the previous intersection in the highway, see this place before proceeding on. The 8th-mile might be out of the current highway, but not from my memories.

Some of my previous photo shoots @ this place are listed
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2162304184/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2783479438/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ck_selvam/2161486461/

Changes

Changes
Originally uploaded by Ms Ladyred

I liked what was written below the photograph...

"If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies..."

It was soothing as I am experiencing my first dash of job-change...

'Kimi ni shika kikoenai' / 'Only you can hear me'...

If you wish me to comment on the drama in one line, I would say that it is a love story woven through telepathy. Literally translating, the title means 'none other than you can hear me', the story is about a teenage girl who has problems talking with people and she is very lonely, lacking in confidence. The boy cannot talk or hear, but he communicates with this girl via telepathy. Finally when they plan to meet, the boy dies saving this girl from an accident, and after this she does not feel alone, for she has met her own self from the future via telepathy and she has more confidence of being alone. The drama ends with the sign language of him saying that you and I are not alone...

The drama is excellently enacted and portrays the psychology of people in such circumstances.The last portion was a little bit confusing. What I liked was the concept that was never heard of and the excellent background music and tracks. The drama is little more than hundred minutes long and the sub-titles are in sensible english...

Originally written as a short story by 'Otsu-ichi', it has been adapted into movie/drama, kids-series and as Manga-comics.

The drama can be viewed online at 'My-soju'

Prayer...

Prayer...robs your ego and drives you into meditation, a conscious state of existence. Put in other words, when you are experiencing latter, you are in a silent prayer. In this conscious state, your performance is at its fullest potential and tiredness is at bay and it benefits your surroundings as well. For many cooking is a daily prayer. Be it performing arts, or designing, or nurturing your pastime hobby. Such prayers bring in clarity of thought in the long-run.





I was stupefied seeing a middle-aged woman at the temple today drawing a 5mx5m kolam (paintings on sand using rice powder widely performed in Tamil Nadu). The way she deftly drew the kolam left me dazzled: she finished the whole drawing in less than twenty minutes. She was in fact praying...a silent prayer coordinating the mind and hand movement with the maths involved. She spread the virus of joy through this silent prayer.


If this is the case, then why have separate religious houses to pray? What I feel is that any religious-house is a congregation of the masses: we are bought-up in such a way that we pray when we enter such places thereby attaining the benefits of prayer.


There need not be any particular rules to pray and no one has the right to force people to pray in a specific manner. We pray for our own selves and not because people are watching us.

...of tapes, reels and spools...and of zeroes and ones...

Twenty years ago, having a tape-player / recorder at home was very rare. I still remember my early childhood days when we had a JVC player and a dozen cassettes. We still have 5-6 of those tapes (26th Grammy, 30th Grammy, two 90-min selectively recorded collection in Tamil and Hindi, Michael Jackson's thriller and one English rock) and hearing to them is a classical experience which any digital surround system cannot provide.

Anything materialistic in this world should wear off with time and so is our aging process and anything that is opposite to this rule is not relished to its core. Had we been youth all sixty-seventy years, life would be boring isn't it? Those that do not wear with time cannot have an emotional quotient attached to them: we all say 'sweet sixteen' as those days cannot be re-lived.

We are experience the digital-wave which empowers us to store huge chunks of data and provide easy and efficient access to them. In this era, we are surrounded by a wild stream of information that forces us to ignore and not to appreciate the real content. In fact, this wild data is hazardous. The computer monitor is ever bright, the FM stations are vibe with energy round the clock, the internet lines are buzzing with data streams but we should not forget that it is hazardous if we enslave ourselves to these.

Swelling in silence...

Nicely composed and timed, this frame is the recent portrait that I relished on. Be it the costumes, backdrop, lighting or the mood imparted by the actors is dazzling. Light yellow, grey and caramel-white and red on a dark wood backdrop is simply amazing. Side lighting gives reality to the frame. In a moving film, we tend to miss the finer details like the white sweater or the simple satin necklace.

This frame is a still photo frozen in time, yet it speaks...it speaks what the director wanted to convey. Kudos to the camera-team and the actors. I am not sure if this frame found a place in the movie 'Vinnai thandi varuvaaya', yet this expresses that one can communicate a lot in still photography. In a different perspective, a lot can be privately communicated in silence. (The path to silence)

PS: The make-up team could have put little more attention. The girls nail-colors were little bit out of sync not only in this frame but in the entire movie. The guy's make-up was a little bit heavy and the girl's make-up was very light and soggy in certain places and it felt in close-up shots; the movie deals with a lot with close-up-shots.

There is a mouse on my desk!

What is a mouse?…ask this question and I am sure that many will refer to the computer mouse. Today for a common man, whatever resembles a real mouse is a small rat and if it is a little bigger it is a rat The fact is that even taxonomists find it difficult to differentiate between the genus rattus and the genus mus just by its morphology; the reason being that both are from the same family of muroid / muridae which is very large and complex. (1)

The situation is worse if your workplace is inhabited by rats. A colleague of mine called upon the admin facility and told them that there is a mouse on her desk for which the janitor darted back saying that if there is an extra mouse, call the computer stores department. Disgusted by this response, she called upon the receptionist and told the situation; the receptionist added a bit of humor to the response claiming that there is a mouse in every other desk-space in the office. Hearing this, the real cause of confusion dawned and my colleague corrected the ‘mouse’ with a ‘rat’…

We have been using the word mouse over and over again in the computer’s context that the real ‘mouse’ has lost its real meaning. This is not only for ‘mouse’…we have been using certain phrases or doing certain actions so many times that the real part of the word/action has lost its purpose.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat

A different experience @ Auroville marathon 2010

It was a different experience running the Auroville marathon. Eerie silence of the forest trail made the falling dew drops to sound like falling stones. The marathon was more than a physical run…I ran through the forest , ran deep into my self and ran to the beat of my heart (the running bib mentioned this aptly as ‘run easy, run to the beat of your heart’!). As a bonus pack, my eyes spotted the red vented bulbul and a monitor lizard during the run. I felt refreshed completing the Auroville marathon.

I completed the half marathon in 3 hrs, 16 mins... eight minutes late than my previous timing. It is time to change my shoes and step up my practice as well :)

Gold on green...observations

I am posting my observations from 'Gold on green'.

Correct me if I am wrong...

1. More exposure needs to be set for yellow lighting when compared to white-fluorescent lighting.
2. The gold gets more predominant in yellow lighting.
3. So, if we are taking portraits, it is better to maintain fluorescent lighting
4. And in case of jewelery advertisements, it is good to give a yellow lighting like in GRT's ad (Golden girl)

I kept the exposure at f/2.6, macro-mode throughout the exercise.

P.S. Thank you friends for pointing out that observations should also be shared...

Gold on green...an experiment with photography

I shot few frames last week: the subjects were few bangles and a ring that my mom usually wears.

I considered two set of lighting for the shots.First, I considered white lighting and switched on all the fluorescent tune lights in the hall. For the yellow lighting, I switched on the lamps in the hall.

Few shots are listed below:
Exposure was set for 8 seconds for the first shot, 2.5 seconds for the next 2 shots and 5 seconds for the last 4 shots.

I hold the camera, I am wrapped by joy and a paradox...

I have been playing and experimenting with my camera for quite sometime, more precisely a little over two years. Viewing the world through the lenses for the first time was a different experience, I started clicking on frames just because I was enthralled by the way nature has composed itself so mathematically organized. Nature's quality is innate, the only change is the way I am experiencing it. Some more experimentation drove me mad to shoot macros (close-up shots). Be it flowers, beetles, jewelery or be it whatever, I started seeing the miniature world in them.

The same camera lenses evoked the paradox in me when I shot a portrait of a girl whom I then knew for more than six months. With whatever lighting was at hand, I shot my first portrait and I learned that each and everyone of us express intricate gestures that go unnoticed amidst our other businesses. I also experienced that a concentrated eye behind those camera lenses will never miss those intricacies. I started exhibiting the prophecy of a stock broker as to what will be her gesture next and I fell in love for her expressions noticed behind the lenses. Did I love her? Certainly not...but I loved her expressions behind the lenses.

The way I entertain myself watching a cinema has also changed in the past two years. Sitting in the theater hall, I carefully observe the lighting, costumes, colors and the background music. I would say that camera taught me to adore nature. It also taught me the fact that people are so varied in themselves. Now whenever I hold the camera in my hand, I am wrapped with joy...so immense that can be only felt.