Worshipping Kumbakarna

Sleep should probably be ranked as God's most fascinating creation. It is hard to be sure if computers enjoy being in a power-save mode. Humans enjoy it. A sound sleep defines our existence. It is what we aspire for. It is what we do best. It signifies our oneness with the absolute. It is the only moment where we manifest our true purpose. Consciousness is that mannerless annoying disturbance that wakes us up unnecessarily and forces us to squeeze out a "life" during the empty spaces between naps. In reality, our actions between two naps is only meant to help us pass time until the next nap. Career, education, TV, and books are all tools we have invented to kill time between naps. We stutter, struggle and have intermittent naps for many decades so that we are well prepared for one big permanent snoozeathon.

The beauty of sleep is hard to describe. The complete absence of work or progress towards work is a testament to the said beauty. The pleasure involved in dozing off for several hours is so immense that we feel guilty at the end of it. People bathe to get rid of the guilt. When one sleeps, one is grateful. The experience is so pure. When Lord Krishna requested Arjuna to perform tasks unmindful of the fruits of the said task, He used sleep as the example. Sleep is where we fulfill that purity. We sleep unmindful of the perils of sleeping and expect no benefit at the end of it. It is an end within itself. It is the beginning , the end and the journey. In celebration of sleep - the unsung hero - we take a look at the top 10 list of 'The Best Sleeping moments' in a person's life;

Top 10 Sleeping Moments Of Human Beings

10. Sleeping after sedatives: Sleeping After sedatives is like a fast point-to-point journey. You are aware of getting on the bed and the next thing you know is sunlight hitting the room, the next morning. There is no 'Will I sleep in this pain?' anxiety. Guaranteed sleep is all you want when the body, mind and everything else is unwell.

9. Sleeping in moving vehicles: There are people who fall asleep the moment the engine of a vehicle, any vehicle, is switched ON. That is a remarkable gift. It is hard to believe that such people are often criticized by friends & family. Who cares for conversation or the scenery, when one can see better stuff in your dreams? Pilots, car-drivers, engine-drivers, bus-drivers, unknowingly switch on a very powerful sedative for such people. If you are ever in doubt about this form of sleep just peep into the IT company buses that pick-up half-asleep people at 7:00AM in the morning and drop them off to work at 8:45. Caged animals, with I.D cards hanging out of their necks, sleep in their seats like there is no tomorrow. The young generation of India march towards work with as much enthusiasm of a POW walking towards a firing squad.

8. Sleeping during a movie: This is a special one. It almost feels as if someone is carefully and gingerly carrying you into la-la land. There is a subtlety and class about this mode that is absent in many other sleep situations. A bad movie is like a surprise gift. Allows for a righteous sleep.

7. The 'Slightly relax on the Sofa' Nap: This is not necessarily restricted to a person's house. It can happen anywhere. You are watching TV and you say "just 5 minutes" and you are transported into a different world. You are visiting friends and the conversation veers to stocks and technology, all you need to say is 'I'll slightly relax on the sofa' keyword and fall asleep. People won't notice you until you have extracted as much as you can from a standard-dosage of sofa-sleep. If you have over-eager stock investors debating in the room, you just stuck gold.

6. The Sunday Afternoon Nap: As we enter a rarefied level of sleep situations, it would not be uncommon to find precious stones and gems such as this. I advise the reader to refrain from sending petitions to me on upgrading this or any other sleep levels to the coveted #1 position. The list is final. Sunday afternoon nap is great for one reason - It mocks Monday in the face. It lets out that belligerent scream against the cruel tyrannical Monday. It seems to ask "I am sleeping now. Look at me. What the hell can you do about it". Importantly, Sunday morning food tends to be on the heavier side and so sleeping is not a problem. Sleeping for 3 hours on Sunday is brazen show of aggression against Monday. There is a good chance that Monday will hit back with furious anger. But it is worth it.

5. Sleeping when it is raining outside: P.G.Wodehouse, Archie comics, rain and sleep takes us straight into the romance department. There is nothing more idyllic than sleeping when it is raining outside. The ithihaasas mention that the whole process of water evaporation, cloud formation, and subsequent rain is inextricably linked to fantastic sleep. Scientific research, the nonsense that it is, has been inconclusive on the effect of rain on sleep. However, experience shows that there is a cosmic link between Varuna and Urmya, goddess and protector of sleep. When Varuna visits during the day, Urmya is sure to follow. Who cares about peacock's dancing and rainbows? Wrapping oneself in the warmth of bedsheets/comforter as raindrops make music on the roof toop is an enchanting experience. One sleeps sounder than usual.

4. When Morning Nap runs into extra-time: People were born saying "5 more minutes". These three words have been encoded into our speech system during our zygotic stages. Statistics show that average human sleep time has been increasing by 5 minutes every day for the past several millenia. While sleepers feel that they have slept for close to 100 hours everyday, science has only been able to account for 10 hours of night sleep. Nowadays, technology is unable to keep up with our ability to squeeze out that extra "5 minutes" of morning sleep time. Snooze functionality, scream functionality, automatic iPod alarms, self-starting blast-mode stereos, the 'shout-like-L.R.Easwari' ear buds have all failed to stop humans from getting 1 hour worth of "extra 5 minutes". Boy! are those 5 minutes really superb? Even if you have remained awake for the entire night in insomnia, the arrival of dawn will instantly cure you and put you to sleep.

3. The Week-day Afternoon Nap During Vacation: Sleeping during vacations needs to have it own temple. People get burgled when they sleep. People sleep in buses and lose their suitcase ( 5 lac rupees included). These people don't get up and blame sleep. They blame the burglar. The police search for the burglar, not sleep. Imagine what would happen if these people were given a guilt-free license to sleep on a 4 month-vacation. For several days during my 12th standard vacation, I got up at 11:30 AM in the morning, brushed my teeth, had lunch, and went back to sleep at 12:30PM. I got up again at 4:30PM, took bath, watched TV, ate dinner and went back to sleep at 9:30PM. For an entire month, I did not leave my house. Never crossed my door into the outside world. I tell you - this sleep is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity. Rarely will you get an extended 3-4 month vacation where you just sleep your way to glory.

2. Sleep Before Exams: You are studying hard. It is the day before exams. A fight against the clock is in progress. 11 chapters to go and you calculate that you only have 10 more hours today an maybe 4 hours the next morning. It is a close call. You may not have enough time to finish all chapters. That is the moment when you make a crucial decision. You sleep. You decide that all your problems will be put into proper perspective after 1 hour's sleep. And you sleep. Ladies & gentlemen - that is the most precious sleep you will ever encounter. Horror, fear and near-death situations await you at the other end of the sleep and yet you sleep peacefully. Everything is paused, danger is ignored and the only victor is sleep.

1. The Afternoon nap after a feast that involves curd rice + vadai-payasam. The most dangerous type of sleep is the one you have immediately after heavy meals. Imagine a super-powered, magnum opus, extra-dimension lunch that simply beats you up again and again and again. A powerful, unmitigated, relentless attack on your taste buds. When it ends - it ends with a curd-rice and a killer of a payasam. A lunch so powerful that your legs fall asleep during the time you were eating. 2 people need to lift you and re-seat you on the couch. A sleep after that, as evil as it is, is the best. The payasam delivers the killer blow that no other sedative can deliver. You sleep like there is no tomorow. You sleep like a man who is about to be sentenced for eternal consciousness and this is the last ever sleep you will get to sleep. Words just fail the author at this moment. Tears flow freely as one imagines this moment of sleep. It rarely happens and when it does - we believe in god.

Worst Sleeping Moments

5. Other People Sleeping when you are not: This is very annoying. You are tense, cramming for exams and working on a homework - and you see people around you sleeping. Grandmother, mother, brother, arbitrary cousin, aunt-from-outer-space, wife and neighbor's cat - they all seem to be sleeping around you. It is very frustrating when sleep is happening and you are not the subject.

4. Sleep during home-lunch visit on an Office Work-day. This is the most unsatisfactory sleep experience for me. Not because of my 'kadami unarvu' (work ethic) - I don't have that. This sleep is so guilt-ridden. Mind constantly worries about various possibilities playing out. This sleep always terminates prematurely.

3. Jet-Lag Sleep. This is when you don't sleep now so that you can sleep well later. It sounds ridiculous. This whole 'not sleeping for the sake of saving sleep' confuses the mind. On one hand it feels like you are doing a noble thing to ensure survival of 'sleep'. On the other hand you feel guilty resisting the allure of instant sleep. Most annoying.

2. Sleeping During Dusk. Maybe its me. If I sleep anytime between 5:30PM and 7:00PM, I feel lousy when I get up. Usually all feelings of guilt, worry and fear disappear when one sleeps. But this sleep does the opposite. One feels depressed and dejected when one gets up. There is of course the fear of not being able to sleep at night.

1. Going to sleep with an upset-stomach/Over Sleeping on Exam Day morning: Sleeping on the morning of an exam and sleeping after taking a laxative is the same thing. You are always on the alert. You are torn apart between two primitive forces. Both are powerful. Here is when you don't want 'sleep' to win the fight. Because if it wins, you are in a mess. There is no pleasure in waking up too. Once you get up, you have to face the ordeal. A loss-loss situation if ever there was one.

On Guitar "Inspiration"

Harris Jayaraj seems to be going through an "inspiration" phase. This comment is based on the evidence of his Guitar work in his most recent album - Vaaranam Aayiram. It is a popular suspicion that the guitar tack in the album's main anthem sounds very similar to the Guitar track of AC/DC's Love Bomb. Anti HJ people linked the two songs in youtube so much that search results, at one point, showed Love Bomb when you searched for "Adiye Kolluthe" .Regardless, Adiye Kolluthe is a fantastic song and I love it.

However - am I the only one who thinks "Mundhinam" (a song in the Vaaranam Aayiram album ) song's guitar progression is a cut & paste of the one in George Michael's Faith? I heard this song the first time today and it literally screamed "Faith". Faith is a cult classic even in Thamizh Nadu. So I am surprised how HJ/Gautham thought - a perception of "inspiration" might not arise.

Movie Review: Saroja

For starters this is a total copy of the 1993 movie 'Judgement Night'. I am not sure if any of the reviewers have mentioned this until now. I hadn't read any review on this movie because of the "high expectations" surrounding it. I was hoping that this movie might get at least 1 show in Seattle (it never did). Judgement Night has been shown on TV so many times, that most folks will readily identify its clone. In the hollywood version - a group of 4 people (a married man whose wife just had a baby, his little brother, and 2 other people) travel to a Chicago boxing match, in a luxury van. A traffic jam makes them lose their way, they take a wrong left or something and end up hitting a person with their van. Soon they find out that the person is a mob-rebel on the run and they witness the mob-leader kill that guy point blank. Then the mob chase them all night and they run and run into freight trains, scary apartments etc.

Saroja is exactly that with more masala thrown in. Its got those neat camera angles, the hep title scene and all the makings of a trendy thriller. It is entertaining for most of the time. When it sags it is because the plot stops throwing surprises after a point, loses creativity (the pipe traps set by the 5 people towards the end was actually pathetic) and starts doing a infinite loop on cat-and-mouse chase scenes. The key element missing in this movie is a scary villain. Maybe Premji Amaran has this capacity of reducing everybody else around him to his level of clown'ishness. Maybe not but Venkat Prabhu seems really scared to show us a scary villain. He could have easily raised the thrill level up a notch by killing one of the four people. Just to make things seem more real. Or, at least have the bad guy do something other than just dance with some arbit hot-chick. Venkat Prabhu treads very carefully. The moment he realizes that the movie has been serious for the 2 continuous minutes, he uses Premji Amaran to crack a joke. The jokes come out at odd times and in some cases are too contrived. They are funny (especially when he says "I was cornered" mimicking Sivaji-Rajni) but no one would do the stuff that he does, in the situations he does them in. Don't get me wrong here, the movie is good. But it is never great. It gets by. Sometimes, it uses all these nice old-tamil movie references (The Karakattakaran music) to get by. They are thrown in at the right time to make things very funny.

If you switch on the TV and find that Judgemen Night is on, you are compelled you watch it till the end. It had its stupid moments but it was a good "I have nothing else to watch on TV" movie. Saroja easily is in that category. It might have been better if it didn't treat itself in such a silly fashion. On the positive side, it keeps you entertained all along, the twist towards the end is pass-mark and Premji is really funny. Venkat Prabhu started with a completely original Chennai 28. He has chosen to borrow in this movie. Not a bad move by any means. In this movie he shows that he knows to work the tools that are required to provide a hit movie.

Thingara Kai'la Kazhuvanum. Kazhuvura Kai'la Thinganum

Its amazing how worst nightmares can quickly come true. About a month ago, I was developing a theory that while emotional stress, heartburn, disappointment and losses are all very painful - nothing really compares to physical pain of blood freely pouring out of your body. We simply underestimate the power of physical pain.

Sure enough, in a few days, I found myself face down in a hospital bed. Its amazing how things happen so quickly. It had only been 5-7 minutes since I met the doctor. Things began to deteriorate into a downward spiral the second after the first meeting happened. When the doctor uses words like "life threatening" and "dangerous" one gets face down on the bed in 2 minutes and asks no questions. So it was hard to be in the most chirpy of moods. From that posture, it was hard to see or focus on the doctor. This doctor quietly looked at my shoulder area and suddenly said "I am gonna have to cut it open now, let me numb it first". My gripe is that if you are going to use such sentences you might as well announce it with sudden music and a lot of sad orchestration. It is the unannounced nature of such sentences that make people drive up the wall. It is amazing how simple sentences can affect you and make you unbelievably alert. Sometimes my wife speaks 3-volume books full of words and that doesn't make me move an inch out of my sofa. This doctor says a small sentence and I want jump out of that bed and run for it. The state of heightened senses is amazing. I highly recommend everyone experience it.

So being the coward that I am, I shuddered. On instinct I found myself saying "Not the injection doctor. I am afraid of shots". If I had a lawyer with me he would have critiqued the poor choice of objection. It is the knife that should have been objected to. Not the injection. The injection exists because of the knife. Not the other way around. I fell right into the trap. The portly looking doctor pauses, looks at me says a "hmm". When a doctor hmmms, it confuses you. Maybe he hasn't seen a grown man who is afraid of injections. Maybe he has (who are we to have these delusions of uniqueness) and simply forgot how to respond. He quietly says as a matter of fact - "ok then ... lets do it without the shot".

The way he said it might have led an unknown passerby to believe that the doctor and I were discussing vegetable prices in Koyembedu. "Potato or Brinjal" the doctor appears to ask. I respond "no doctor! potato is vaayu. Lets go for Brinjal". For which the doctor says "brinjal... okay lets make brinjal-curry today". If the unknown passerby had left the premises after the doctor's response, he might've been permitted to assume that we were having a discussion on vegetables. Because what happened later was not for the weak-hearted. Mainly because I went from the well-documented "state of confusion" straight to "state of complete surrender". People cut open apples, canned food, water melon, gift boxes. People don't "cut open" other people, other people's shoulders. Quite frankly, it was hard to understand what he meant by "cut open". The doctor, maybe he read my mind, proceeded to take out a plastic bag and tear it open. Out popped a scalpel. So he meant that "cut it open". The "cut it open" with extreme pain written all over it.

At that moment I was Jack's complete lack of shame.

People have seen Rambo movies where the hero cuts himself open, plucks out a bullet from his body, pours alcohol, and stitches his body back like the way 2nd floor maami in Usman Road stitches 'ravikkais' for Rs 25/ravikkai. It looks easy on TV. In real life it has staggering impact on a person's peaceful disposition. I began pleading with the doctor to consider alternate means. I suggest tablets, ointment, rest, 4-days-leave, legiyam, kasaayam and many things that even the great droid Getafix might have not thought of. This doctor catches my flailing hands and says "look here! if you fight me, I'll fight you". It dawns on me that I have been pushing this man's hands away. Then I go straight to begging. My throat is dry and I can't believe the man who had such a pleasant conversation with me a few minutes ago is now threatening me with a knife. The world had turned upside-down in a few minutes. Without warning. Finally I push more words out of my mouth - "Give me 1 minute to mentally prepare myself - doctor". He appears to loosen his grip on me and says "okay, you have a minute".

I relax. And for some reason the numerous movies in which a Ponnambalam-type guy rapes Raasi-type woman flash through the mind. In 10 seconds, I am ambushed without warning. The doctor never planned to give me a full minute. The doctor presses my hand down, my wife holds my legs down and I feel a knife drive into me.

Pain.

Movie Reviews: Burn After Reading, Kuselan, IMAX: The Dark Knight

Burn After Reading: Finally! an eccentric movie after a long time. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich and Francis Mcdormand star in this unusually brilliant movie that clearly rises above the star cast. This is a movie Kamal Hasan and Sangeetham Srinivas Rao combination might've been proud of. In India they've done the most movies in this genre. For the first 30 minutes, you have no clue where this movie is progressing. You have 4-5 dim-witted characters doing absolutely crazy things. They do it so seriously that they almost pass off as normal people. At about the half-way mark it suddenly dawns on you that this is a comedy movie. That is a fantastic moment. This is brilliant effort at creating a movie magic experience.

From that point onwards the characters keep doing the same things they did in the first half but you see a new dimension that goes on to make everything hilarious. I don't know if this story is worth explaining and I can't imagine how Brad Pitt & George Clooney would have reacted after hearing this story. I am glad they accepted the roles because this is like no other role they have played. I especially can't believe Brad Pitt did the role that he did with such "panache". This guy is a brilliant actor. I've watched most Coen brother movies - this is not a great movie but certainly falls in the "well worth a try category".

Kuselan: 2 Types of Rajini movies fail. The first kind underestimate the stupidity of Rajni fans and cast Rajni in really good movie (with a good story etc). This almost never happens now. The second category is the 'Naatukku Oru Nallavan' category of movies which overestimate the stupidity of the Rajni fan. The directors guess that the Rajni fan is 1000X dumb when they are really only 800X dumb. Kuselan falls in the latter category. P.Vasu must've thought Kuselan is an ideal movie that will "satisfy rajini saar fans" and went on to make such an idiotic movie that only the bottom 75 percentile of fans (the ones who constantly call him "thalaiva" or think "paal abhishekam" for him is a good idea) will like. Glad I saved money on tickets for this.

IMAX The Dark Knight: I've already reviewed this. I was really looking forward to seeing this movie for the second time in IMAX. Seattle IMAX is not your typical IMAX. Its just like a normal theater. I wondered why they were calling it an IMAX when i walked in. I agree some aspects were different from a regular movie theater but with such a small screen (compared to the IMAX theaters in Dallas) the experience was underwhelming. However, I have to say - The Dark Knight is a fantastic movie. I have become such a big fan of Christian Bale because of this. He plays a convincing non-hero in such a complex story. And nobody outside of Chris Nolan could've made this kind of a Batman movie. Remarkable.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Life Without Walls Campaign.

I am a PC: Advt 1




I am a PC Advt 2:




I am a PC Advt 3:

On Eureka & Displacement

When did Archimedes realize that he was shouting 'Eureka' without any clothes on and what did he do after that? Did people point that to him? Did the person who pointed this out miss the point altogether?

On Superb Songs

Dr. Lakshminarayanan said this on Reethigowlai

" Reethgowlai could be compared to a steroid shot to Ben Johnson!... Its raga lakshanam is so unique that it gets imprinted in our mind easily. Beginners in carnatic music identify Reethigowlai rather facilely and this gives great encouragement to venture into learning other ragas. The jubilance of identifying a raga by ourselves initially is unparalled and even a triple 800 score in GRE Pre-Test wouldn't make you that happy! Oh man, what a joy! ..... Reethigowlai is the janyam of Karaharapriya (22nd melam). It is a vakra ragam and hence with a convoluted arohanam and avarohanam. Sa Ga2 Ri2 Ga2 Ma1 Ni2 Da2 Ma1 Ni2 Ni2 Sa; Sa Ni2 Da2 Ma1 Ga2 Ma1 Pa Ma1 Ga2 Ri2 Sa"

Here is how various people have interpreted this raaga.

Subramanyapuram: A Surprise



As a side note. It is amazing how the Balu mahendra style of picturization still works. The heroine isn't beautiful at all. She is like a Suvalakshmi/Deivayani category heroine, who are surprisingly favored by loser thamizh men searching for homely women. But you have to give her one thing. She's got a million expressions. Over half of them generated by her eye. And most of it has been beautifully captured.

Ilayaraja: Swathi Muthyam & M. Balamurali Krishna

Dr. lakshminarayanan had this to say about this superb song.

"It is a very easily identifiable, very classical janya ragam that was relished by composers like Thyagaraja. But, none in the cinema arena seems to have used it in the pre-Ilaiyaraaja period. In mid seventies, here comes the uneducated music director from Madhurai jilla....! He tunes a couple of "tappanguthu" that marks his initial success! Within 2 to 3 years after his debut, he calls one of the most memorable geniuses of Carnatic music, Shri Balamurali Krishna to sing one cinema song for him. "Alright thambi" says Balamurali, and goes to the recording theatre.....

Was Balamurali surprised initially when Ilaiyaraaja played the tune for him in his harmonium? If I were him, I would have been! First of all, out of the blue, why Reethigowlai? Why not the hackneyed Hindholam or Mohanam? This absolutely classical raga selection shows his desire to venture into pure, traditional ragas! It is like A.R.Rahman springing a surprise by tuning purely classical Yadhukula Kamboji interludes in kuluvaliyae (muthu)!"

Ilayaraja creates Magic



A Real Genius Interprets it: MLV



A.R.Rahman: Yes. It is a Beautiful Beast.

Features two of my favorite singers. SPB on top of Reethigowlai is like Popeye falling into a vat of spinach.



Ahem...cough...ahem

Son jumps 16 feet.

Marketing 101 - The Morton Salt Case

Question: As a consumer living in North America, what would you do if Morton Salt puts out a large scale TV advertisement dissing and making fun of a competitor, who holds less than 5% share in the Salt industry?

I hear your answer. Which is is why the second installment in the Seinfeld, Marketing Campaign and Advertisement series is the way it is.

Blog Ula II

2008 has been the year of disgruntlement at Hawkeye's blog. It has been a veritable 'Summer of George' marathon, filled with disagreements, anger and further disagreements with the world at large. Blog Ulas have suffered as a result. I have been biased towards blogs (or posts) that are in a similar mood. Blogs are an interesting phenomena. Its really not a splendid original invention, just a rehash of the Radio (or the Thiruvizha) concept but it has its own flavor. I have always found blogs which express real opinions as fascinating. Now real can have many meanings and lets not get into technicalities here. Let me share my 2 cents on blogging in this post.

Sometimes bloggers are like new employees in a company. They start in an idealistic fashion, have Utopian views, are tactful, diplomatic and generally pander to the needs of their audience. Care is take not to write anything controversial or express an opinion that is real. When they do write strongly, its mostly on the oft-repeated regular bashing pads like religion, tam-brahm'ness, superstition, Australian cricket team, George Bush, and USA. These things don't talk back and so there is no real risk of offending anybody. In effect nobody says anything worthwhile. All this changes as they begin to blog for a while or generally get riled up about something. Then the need for tact goes away.

Given this, the only way to get a real opinion is to kick people in the teeth (metaphorically speaking) and get a real discussion out of them. People are at their best when there is some adrenalin. As anybody who has been with a group of close friends would attest, a good argument happens when people don't care about tact and are bare bones about their opinions, really get their hands dirty and fight. We don't agree with them. But its fun and more importantly, its entertaining. The above is just an "indru oru thagaval" introduction. The blogs that I am about to Ula may or may not fit into the spirit mentioned above but many sure do rant.

I-Sriram is a notorious blogger. Nobody knows if he is serious about the stuff he writes. Here, he is at his controversial best. I laughed for such a long time after reading that post. Gradwolf isn't about to let go of the beaten-to-death topic but it brings out the best in him. Rads vents & rants at the world at large. It is hard write a dignified post when you are meeting a fellow blogger who is suffering from cancer. Chenthil keeps it real. The person herself, and I have read this post a zillion times, writes one of the best posts I've ever read so far announcing the beginning of her end (Note: Lalita is no more). Then we have a post where LKS meets life and Sundar gives us a fact of life. Arun Sundar rants his 2 cents on blogging and patriotism. Janani rants against hawkeye ranting against Dasavatharam. Fair point. I like her blog. Two Kostins for her though: have you ever used a 'souchalyam' as opposed to the regular toilet? Do you think Asin is a "near perfect potrayal" of the dim-witted brahmin woman? Suresh's rant on Dasavathram makes me think that she'd kill him in case they met (as a result of chaos theory).

I remember writing a similar post long back, but Sudipta hits the nail on the head on blogs and ideas. He also writes a blunt post that breaks a few stupid myths. 12th man really does a detailed rant on people using a special type of elevators found in his work place. He is very specific. Gans does a rant on news delivery today. I don't watch news. Never watched it. So this rant was particularly interesting. Lekhni rants about our favorite topic. The anonymous commenter. George rants against poor action sequences in new movies. Priya Bhaskaran makes me rant against diet, gym and other bad stuff. Her recipes rock. Wake up Vidhya! Finally Varnam rants on the stupid thought prevalent in India that tends to combine Sanskrit and communalism as a package set.

So there you go. I did a Blog Ula on rants. Granted, I don't have the kind of time these days to pick out the best rants and show them to you. This is the best I could do with my time. I think, I'll go back to my once a week blogging frequency with the hope that the next Blog Ula would be a humor Ula.

S. Janaki

Sometimes when I am sitting and sticking needles into S.Janaki dolls, I often wonder if there is a better way to express my hatred towards her voice. Airtel Super Singer has given me a superb idea.

S. Janaki should be made to stand in that podium with red, yellow and green lights and sing all of her songs one after the other. For each song, after she sings 2-3 lines, one should press the red button, shout 'REJECT' and simply yell at her for having such an obscene height-of-abaswaram voice. One should pour vitriol on her shruthi, thaalam, raagam, pace and pretty much everything one knows about music terminology. After pressing the red button again all three judges should shout "your voice sucks" and then make her move to the next song.

SMS competitions - on the best way to abuse S. Janaki - should be conducted and the winner should be allowed to throw a basket full of eggs and rotten tomatoes on S. Janaki at maximum speed.

On Seinfeld, Marketing Campaigns and TV Advertisements