the great harry potter con game

a few weeks ago there was harry potter mania all around. people were standing in all night queues and fighting over the right to be able to buy the book first. People were supposed to have fought over things like who dies in the last edition and so on.

Here in Mumbai wife paid 750 bucks in advance five months ago to book a copy. She wanted to go out and pick up the book at 6 in the morning - gave up the idea thinking that she would have to wait for hours. Later that day at 6 pm she was surprised to find out that there were no queues, no fights, nothing. The books were not sold out and copies were available easily. To add to the insult the advance booked copies were dished out by disinterested salesmen in pathetic plastic bags. She could have walked in the day the sixth book was released and got the copy just like that. What an anti climax?!!!

It seems some 50000 copies were booked in advance in Mumbai. Thats 37.5 lakh rupees that the bookstores got in advance for 5 months interest free. Wow!

The same will get repeated using the media and advertising for iphone and for the next book thats deemed a world best seller.

Its a great con game and am a part of it.

boxed in thinking

sometimes one cannot think straight. it comes from having looked at a situation with the same eyes a thousand times. it becomes impossible to see the contours, the landscape with objectivity. the mind plays games. i call it being boxed in. here is what i do to solve the problem - take a deep breath and get up and go for a walk around the office block. read comics, mumbai mirror, anything else to help forget the problem. look at people, their faces, at couples making faces at each other, at strays sniffing at leaves, at centipedes trying to get under the grass or stones. It helps.

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mindgames,
with myself,
forgetting,
a pawn i become,
as the game goes on!

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Worli Seaface

(image courtesy Prax)

Dirty waters of a dirty sea,
unburdened emotion
of a million lives.

Collided with me last evening
Am recovering, one rain drop at a time.

Cadell Junction Thoughts

Once in a while I walk around the Shivaji Park. Past mayoral bungalow, past veer savarkar smarak, past penkar's gym right upto the petrol pump and crossword and then turn left into the tree lined avenue and walk around the historical ground made famous by sundry politicians.

Could not resist the urge for a murky coffee and indulged for a full 45 minutes - alone on a corner table with the Outlook for company. Bliss.

Took off when I realised that 45 minutes of bliss means nothing unless there is something to look forward to. Maybe it is time to find something to look forward to other than work and a few stray passions.

The Cadell Cafe junction is inviting, Mahim bay at one end with it burdened waters and Dadar at the other side. Try standing there at the signal waiting for an enternity for the red to turn to green. Fortunes go on four wheels. Some the size of my bed room!

pics speak more than words

my alterego!!



What do these eyes say?

barista musings

There used to be a time when one could sit at a Barista coffee shop and think. Nowadays the people around do the thinking for you. Gone are the days when the coffee shop was inviting and one could sit down with a laptop and write presentations. Now couples verbally make out there, others sit watching, more others it down and gulp muck.

barista

barista, barista of the old times where are you? These days one encounters kids on hormones, tired sales folk, jaded VCs and bored housewives in your cosy orange corners. Where are the days of solitude when one could sit and read and mull and write a few pages of unbridled copy.

Heck and to imagine that Chatroom Blues and Coffee shop Tango was written in Baristas in Pune and Mumbai.

It is sad.

old memories, old socks and other such little bits from the back of the mind

When ever I have been asked to introduce myself I have stumbled and tripped - often leading to unintended jokes and awesome regrets. Let me try this once again.

was born in pune, people at various educational institutions tried to make me learned. have done sundry jobs, been a writer (yesyes published), columnist (only male columnist in a woman's mag), behind the counter salesman, footstool, old furniture, durbaan, software marketer, serial failure, travel writer, tea estate guide, criminal at large, devil incarnate and so on till the city of mumbai finally gave me a small makeover. (it actually happened on the first day in Mumbai when I stood on the Kurla flyover and wondered which was west)

found refuge where most scoundrels find work - advertising and then learned to unlearn and work with chota mota companies till I wrote the business plan for nautanki.tv - thats an online TV channel and not India's youtube.

have a little daughter and a patient wife and one fish. 1200 books, four volumes of handwritten poetry and the hope that someday soon I would be able to retire to the nearest hillside and grow vegetables.

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Found an old friend who worked in a documentary with me. She had married early and vanished from the face of earth. Now she comes as a surprise, a placement / recruitment professional. But so much has changed in the years in between. 1994 was a different era - the IMRC canteen had so much character and there was promise. She has changed - a mom of a ten year old and a wife for 14! and I have changed - 'battle scars that show up in your words'. We knew each other, now we do not. there is a decade and a half of not knowing - and we are strangers from the same period of life that was.

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Found an online forum too - The Rosary School forum - inhabited by the net junkies of this generation. Posted a request for the 88ers to show themselves and no responses so far. That 19 years have gone by and memories have faded is apparent. Wonder what Sandeep Oswal is doing now?

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For some reason the past twenty years have been on my mind for some days now. Maybe it is the time for spring cleaning. To dump the old socks and file the yellowed pages away for eternity.

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For some reason the rains this year are different :)

Fish Bowl Life

everything is magnified
when u live in a fish bowl

morning images

In Mumbai even the raindrops have mega dreams. They imagine that they hold a bucket full of water. And they clog everything. Three years in a row Mumbai has been flooded, this year it seems like an usual chore to be done with.



Coffee shops have an unusual shimmer to them. The windows mist up, the humid air forms a layer of dreams on the surface and like tear drops float downwards. Hope rests, in anticipation of a hot cup of what pretends to be coffee.



And sometime later empty plates tell no lies. Crumbs betray.



Week begins with the right attitude. Rains be damned.