Padayatty in Blogworld

Since the time of the blogging revolution's early beginnings, I've read about it in local newspapers. I even came across a few blogs which didn't interest me any much to get initiated into blogging. Moreover, by the boom time of the blog's I was in some of my most serious academic phases, which meant I wouldn't have any access to the internet. So after all that, I came and joined HNLU, whereon began my blogging days.

Here are the links to two blogs that made me want to get into blogging. They're not any drop-dead great or anything, but something about these appealed to me.

http://vysnu.com/

http://anuragjain.blogspot.com/

The first one, belongs to somebody I knew from my Loyola days. The thing is that, though this guy was not any great friend of mine, or any swell guy by my standards, once I started reading his blog, I couldn't help coming back to his blog. That's what blogging is all about.

Catch my reviews of both these blogs, very soon.

On Blogging

A cool write-up on "How to Blog?". I disagree with the one on poems though.
About the rest... I'm gonna do just that. Blog-World... Here comes Neil 'Blogger' Padayatty.

Bloggies 2005

Here's your chance to decide which blog is the best amongst all. You could've even nominated your own. But then, the time for filing nominations is over. Next year, maybe even Catch-22 will find it's place in the nominations. But for now, lets vote for the best. Go ahead and exercise your Blogger Right:

The 2005 Bloggies

I'll recommend Tony Price's article on How to Blog for the best article or essay about weblogs category.

The Girlfriend Catch!

Here's one of my favourite catches:

I think of the beautiful girl who'd be the love of my life...
Of the likeness she has to some beautiful actress!

Suddenly a million dumb blonde equivalents come to my mind. The kind that go on talkin' incessantly about nothing. The kind that is over-sensitive for the wrong things. The kind who think loving is the showy kind of phony thing.
I'm scared to hell. God... I sure don't want any dumb blonde as the love of my life, who'd eat my brain out and still gain no brain.

But then, would I be satisfied with just any ordinary looker. The Higher-me says 'Beauty is only skin deep' and that I should as the rational being that I am, look beyond mere facades to the inner beauty. But the human-me looks towards Bollywood and Aishwarya Rai or Meera Jasmine or the likes. I have more emphathy to the human-me. I give-in.

But wait... Here comes my Higher-me and my guardian-angel-complete-with-harp-and-all; does a prick on my sensitive conscience and tells me, 'thou art not so handsome yourself'. So, if I treat someone as ugly, then that's how everyone will treat me. There are also these movies where people who don't see the not-so-beautiful-true-love right in front of their eyes and go after strange-foreign-beauties, and finally somewhere near the end of the film, see the real true love. That's a nice feeling. But the catch is that... mostly all these next-door-girls are also good looking actresses. The only film, which didn't end like that was 'Shallow Hal'. That was a good movie. Another was 'Shrek', where the frog-turning-into-prince routine was reversed and recast into Princess-turning-into-Ogre! Wonderful themes!

But again, I don't consider myself as an owner of an appearance as unaesthetically disposed as that of either Shrek or the guy in 'Shallow Hal'. So where does that leave me? Somewhere in the middle... or is it Catch-22!

Don't know

Flabbergasted! That's what I am... at the way things are going. They take the most unexpected twists, throwing you into disarray and disarming all your senses... Defeated! Is what I may become at the end of it all... When you think of throwing it all away, letting go, pops up here a challenge... No I'm not man enough to face it... Why not give it a try??? What for... to be more confused the day after? or to feel more bitter at your manipulators. Catch-22... I don't suppose there is any definition for it. Even the Catcher in the Rye needs food to eat. So... do I lose my soul for my stomach? And forgiveness... How many more times do I chose to forget and put up the holiest-of-all face? Fed-up... ya of the others... but not me... what about the Utopia of mine. Is it Neverland... or is it? What about being the Rolling Stone? Nah... I'm too sensitive for that. The Complete Unknown... Too ambitious for that. They never wrote a song or made a movie or wrote a book about someone like me. I could go on... Tangled up in Philosophies! Could go on... But the miles to go, calls me.

Rashtrabhasha

On my views about the Hindi Chauvinists... Read first what Ramachandra Guha has to say...

Hindi Chauvinism

Hindi Against India


Glory to the Great Nation!!!

Me and Catch-22

The reason I got obsessed with this Catch-22 thing is that, for the ordinary person that I am, everything seems Catch-22. Some clever guys always come up with one catch or the other and fool me. The catches always favour the clever guys. Poor unintelligent dullards like me are the one's who always are at the receiving end of the catches.

I mean... take Yossarian for example. The poor bastard was just an ordinary man, who thought going for war was going to be just another job. He ended up being tangled up in all those catches. His innocent acceptance of the brilliance of Catch-22, reflects his absolute failure to make anything out of the catch.

Same's the case with me... poor me. The funny thing is, despite this world being so full of catches, I never am able to come up with any catches to entrap these clever guys. They always deliver the final catch. They leave me speechless. Dumb me... There's a lot of catches I could talk to you about. The catches involving friends, family, studies... I'll talk about it another time.

Yossarian is a personal hero of mine. Here's my ordinary man. Here's me with all those unclear concepts and all. Saying this now... saying that then... I definitely do not understand the world in any strict sense. What I do know is that I do not have any correct-exact-to-the-point answers for anything. My philosophy is unclear. I'm a most unstable person as far as thoughts are concerned. So don't expect me not to eat my own words. That's my diet.

Here's a Catch-22 to be aware of:

Don't ever keep a strict philosophy.
There's bound to be a Catch somewhere.

Ro'Bin' Laden

That's what Liaquat Ali Khan has to say in the Hindu Open Page. Check this link out for more on why Osama Bin Laden is similar to Robin Hood and why Osama is a typical American heroic material:

http://www.hindu.com/op/2005/01/04/stories/2005010400261500.htm

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting...

Osama

"Produced in Washington D.C., directed by the CIA, and filmed in Afghanistan!"

The CM & Me!!!

Ya... CM is indeed Chief Minister of Chattisgarh. So, I and Adarsh and Parth and the Bangladesh-Returned Debanshu and Amit, along with Prof. Shantakumar and Prof. Saha, all went to meet the CM at his sprawling bungalow at Civil Lines. God was that Chief Minister lucky! Having me to meet him and all.
Anyway we went in the Univ bus and alighted near the gate. There was a big crowd with all sorts of petitions to make to the CM, gathered there.

But since we were big-shot-lawyers-to-be, and we had the big-shot-look with the black coat and all, and more because of the genuine-big-shots that had cleared our appointment, we didn't have to wait outside like 'we the people' did. We went right through the small gate beside the big gate(I guess that one's for the CM only), to the security shed. There we were supposed to fill up our names in a register. But again, since we had our RIP(really-important-personality), the Resgistrar, G.S. Verma, with us we could get away with writing Registrar+8. That's us.

We took the road-often-taken to the CM's bungalow and there, we waited for our turn to come. So there was I and you-know-who-all standing talking amongst ourselves talking in sarcastic tones about our favourite politicians(Lalu and Jaya included). In between some guy, maybe PR, came and took notes on what we were doing there. Amit gave a detailed account of his exploits at Dhaka. You see he had place HNLU on the map by winning some really coveted prizes there. Three Cheers, Amit old boy

A Nair-Geertz Affair

You would remember that I had put a link to a website of my friend, Srikant Nair, which was a dedication to Prof. Clifford Geertz. Well, the good news is Srikant, today got a letter from Geertz, appreciating his endeavour. Now isn't that great. Talk about International Relations. Here's the now famous link, once agin for you:

http://srikantnair.tripod.com/

Three cheers!!! Even our Sociology Professor is excited about this. They're thinking of something to lure him to HNLU. Something like the Cockfight at Bastar.

Citizen Media

On the blog being the new democratic means of serving news, as against the embedded journalism that we see more and more, nowadays. Here's what Sevanti Ninan, reputed media critic, says in his column 'Media Matters' in The Hindu Sunday Magazine:

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2005/01/02/stories/2005010200430300.htm

We The Media !!!

Sport Essentially Is Fun

My reflections on the year 2004 in sports...

Well, I found this article by Rohit Brijnath in the latest issue of the Sportstar. It just about sums up all my thoughts on sports. Check out this link:

http://www.sportstaronnet.com/tss2752/stories/20041225004900600.htm

Nice cover-story.

Happy New Year!!!

Padayatty's Movies Round-Up 2004

I didn't see too many new movies in 2004. Reason being this stupid city called Raipur has only moth infested non-AC cinema halls. Further they don't release any English movies in English. They dub it into Hindi. Despite such concerted efforts to keep me from watching movies, I did manage to see quite a few good movies. Here's my year-end list.

Kal Ho Na Ho* - The K-Jo effect. Another superhit for King Khan. One movie that will add to my all-time list. Vibrant colours in every frame, a pure joy to look at, a truly pleasurable experience. Check up in a few days time for my full-length review of Kal ho Na Ho.
Padayatty Rating: (5/5)

Main Hoon Na - Here's a typical Bollywood potboiler; But for a change, all our favourite film critics are endorsing it as a tribute to the Bollywood Film Industry's yesteryears. Big hit. King Khan Rulez. I would say I love it for SRK's sake. I would say otherwise, a largely unmemorable film. Not even typical SRK style. Loved the song 'Chale Jaise Hawaein'.
Padayatty Rating: (2/5)

Yuva - Mani Ratnam gets back to making bilinguals and end up with a not-so-successful film. The Tamil version was more of a hit than the Hindi one. I saw the Hindi one. Style reminded me of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. The high point was the music by A.R. Rahman, and songs that could be termed youth anthems. 'Dhakka Lakka Bukka', 'Fanaa' and 'Anjaana', especially. The theme, which is about the Youth taking active part in the country's future is an appreciable one, except that the movie was more of love stories than the theme itself.
Padayatty Rating: (3/5) +1 for music

Pirates of the Carribean - Johnny Depp is simply fantastic as the pirate captain. Superb fantasy adventure movie. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Padayatty Rating: (5/5)

The Village - Manoj Night at it again. Generally everyone agrees that is is his best movie till date. But, I liked the earlier ones better. Still, a really good movie. I see a few metaphors in it, which I might discuss later on.
Padayatty Rating: (3/5)

The Day After Tomorrow - A really good movie which tells the world what the world would be like, if we continue abusing it the way we are. I see a criticism of USA somewhere in it, which really appeals to me.
Padayatty Rating: (4/5)

Dhoom - A stylish film, neatly executed with cool bikes and Matrix style slow-motions. Didn't know Bollywood could even come near this. John Abraham is one handsome devil. The songs were good, especially the Tata Young adaptation, 'Dhoom Machale'. Uday Chopra and Abhishek Bacchan were also good. Female leads were just eye-candy.
Padayatty Rating: (4/5)

Murder - Remake to the 'e' of last year's Unfaithful. But imagine that on Indian screens, that too a theme of adultery and its consequences! Mallika Sherawat oozed sex, and that too, to the liking of the masses. Sex bomb! The songs were good, especially, 'Kaho Na Kaho' and 'Bheege Honth Tere'.
Padayatty Rating: (2/5)

Girlfriend - A thoroughly distasteful movie, though I say it here, not in the Parivar sense. Nothing remeberable at all. Some people even said it was sterotyping of lesbians, which is a very bad thing to do.
Padayatty Rating: (0/5) +1 for the scenes.

Chathikkatha Chandu - Hilarious, slap-stick. Every moment enjoyable. Jayasoorya is every man's comedy hero. All the supporting cast were also great. The songs are on my favourite's list. 'Love Letter', 'Mazhameettum Shruti' - excellent.
Padayatty Rating: (5/5)

Lakshya - Farhan Akthar makes a really good movie on life in the forces. Wonderful performance Hrithik Roshan. Innovative music by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. But nowhere near the class of Dil Chahta Hai and came at a time after an overkill of Kargil War films. Not for the masses.
Padayatty Rating: (4/5)

Prisoner of Azkaban - Just another kiddie movie. Where's Alfonso Curaon the talented director. Emma Watson as Hermione looks cute.
Padayatty Rating: (2/5)

4 The People - Jayaraj on militant youth power for changing the order. The fast cuts used efficiently. Excellent music. This is Jassie Gift. 'Ninte Mizhimuna', 'Loka Samastha', 'Lajjavathiye' ... all wonderful. Didn't like the theme.
Padayatty Rating: (2/5) +1 for the music.

Hulchul - Priyadarshan remakes Malayalam's longest running film Godfather. The original was definitely better. But then for the Hindi heartland, which doesn't get any standard comedy, the movie is just perfect. Vidyasagar's music is useless.
Padayatty Rating: (2/5)

I probably left out quite a few movies. That's because they don't come back to my memory that much. That won't happen this year, because this year I'm blogging.

This post is getting boring... Sorry 'bout that. So stop.

*This one was released December, 2003. But I suppose I would be justified putting it here because I didn't have a blog last year.