media

Vande Mataram 1

This entry was posted in media nostalgia on by

Heard it after ages on AIR. Not the AR Rehman pop version but the old world, slow and gentle version that we used to sing in the school assembly. In fact Rehman’s version is not really the Vande mataram that I am talking about. It’s interesting to note how the same lyrics, set in a different backdrop of melody evoke different feelings. The Rehman version is pop patriotism, more josh than the older one, asserts our patriotism with gusto. The old one is sober, and puts me at ease, calms me down. It’s more about cherishing what you have instead of asserting it. May be because I associate it with that security that childhood provides. It also reminds me of waking up to the strains of the sarod in the early hours of morning, coming from the radio, which my mom would be listening to as she went around rushing to get us ready for school.
There’s a third version too, which belongs to some black and white movie. This one also has josh but of a different kind. More to do with anger, revolution and “get out of our country” feelings. This one’s not often heard.

I remember thinking when I was a kid, that the wordings (if not the exact ones then some derivatives) of Vande Mataram provide a good means of traditional, unique sounding names to eager parents waiting to name their babies. Shubhra, Jyotsana, Pulkit, Yamini, Phull Kusumit, Drumudul, Shobhini, Suhasini, Sumadhur bhashini..Shasya Shyamalam..

So many names!



You’ve got spam

This entry was posted in media social on by (updated 6044 days ago)

If ever there was any four letter word that could be done without, it is SPAM. A total waste of everyone’s time, money, effort and bandwidth. Apart from the usual ones, this piece that I am writing is about something peculiar. I have known spam mails enough to know that no such googlish intelligence exists with them to send spam related to things that we write about in our mails. Forget urging you to do something, this one has crossed all limits and already *done* something!! I have been receiving spam from Shaadi.com since quite some time now, all urging me to use their services. I have been duly deleting those mails. I have an account on hotmail which was the first email account I ever had. Its my spam account. Whenever I have to give my mail id on the net, this is what I give. I still continue checking it coz I opened this account when I was in college and *all* my college friends somehow remember this mail id of mine. My irrepressible efforts to educate them about my new mail id’s have never borne fruit. For some reason everyone from college ‘remembers’ this id and straightaway uses it only.

So as I said, I had been diligently cleaning my account of all Shaadi.com mails, when one fine day I saw a couple of mails from Shaadi.com with various subjects. One of them read ‘your profile is being screened’. A later one read ‘your profile has been approved’. Yet another one – ‘Your profile has been activated’. More mails were all prospective hopefuls trying to get in touch with me!! I was shocked beyond my grey cells about the audacity of the shaadi.com chaps! For one, I dont share my passwords, so it wasnt someone’s prank. How dare they make a profile on my behalf and even *pretend* to approve it!
I wondered how they could have gathered so much data about me to even make a working profile which was getting responses! Even if they had used a bot, it would have to have a lot of intelligence.

I checked up the profile and this is what it said.

I am 23, single, Hindu female living in Maharashtra, India
>>> how did they ever guess that!! I never knew that I had a GPS device embedded and they had a tracking device!

My Basics
Age: 23
>>> am sure this will make age exaggerating 🙂 really jealous LOL
Marital Status : Never Married
Children : No
Height : 5′ 7″
>>> wow what a height!!

Complexion : Very Fair
Body Type : Slim
Manglik : No

My Education & Career

Education : Bachelors
Occupation : Designer
>>> just how did they know that this was what i wanted to be when i was a kid??

Annual Income : Rs.5,00,001 and above


My Lifestyle

Diet : Non-Veg
Drink : Occasionally
Smoke : No
My Religious & Social Background

Religion : Hindu
Caste : –
Sub-Caste : –
Mother Tongue : Bengali
>>> aami bengali nahi jaanee chhhe (whatever)

Family Values : Liberal


My Location

Current Residence : Maharashtra, India
Residency Status : Permanent Resident
Country Of Birth : India
Sun Sign : Capricorn

My Personality, Hobbies, Long-Term Goals, etc
i love reading, traveling, music, playing games, dancing, cooking, excursion, sleeping, singing. dynamic personality.

>>> basically generic hobbies.

i love to love.i hate to hate.
>>> err.. i cd have been a little more poetic than that!

i like to eat. i like to drink occasionally

>>> in other words, wow! what a profile!


Just what on earth gave them the right to impose themselves so much on anyone! Going by the text in the description, it doesnt look like an automated job. Or maybe they chose a standard text and made several profiles with that. Thank god they didnt morph some picture into anything resembling a female and upload it on my behalf! Am pretty darned sure the matches that came would have been some other spam created profiles, created like mine!


The ‘other’ end of the road

This entry was posted in delhi media social on by (updated 5192 days ago)

One of the many things I wonder about is … what it would be like being on the Delhi – Lahore bus. The Delhi – Lahore bus service resumes today. It would have left Delhi at 6am and would be half way by now as I blog about it. What would be on the minds of the people who go from Delhi to Lahore? Would they have someone across the border to welcome them, someone looking forward with open arms or would they be going just to satiate an inherent curiosity about this ‘other’ land, which was once their forefathers…
What makes us so different from ‘them’ – the Pakistanis? They look the same as us, wear the same clothes, eat the same dishes, speak the same tongue, were ruled by the same rulers.. heck, most of us would be able to trace back some antecedents there. I, for one, am very inquisitive (part of my nature) about what it would be like to live in Pakistan. Both sets of my grandparents hail from West Pakistan and migrated at the time of partition. They actually went through what we now just hear about or watch movies about. We can not really gauge the intensity of the occurances. But my heart really goes out to them, when they recount tales of eras bygone, of land that was their own once, of people that were their own too…
What would it be like to see where my grandparents used to live at one point of time (their youth to be precise), where my dad and a few of his siblings were born, what kind of lives they lead, what that camera looked like with which my maternal grandpa used to pursue photography as a passion, what those palatial houses looked like of which I’ve heard so much. That camera was among the many prized possessions that got left behind somewhere along with many cherished memories, in what we now call Pakistan. I can sense that some part of my grandparents being was among the many things left behind. What would it be like to visit Pakistan and go, be a part of what they left behind… What would it be like at the ‘other’ end of the road…


Reincarnation

This entry was posted in media on by (updated 5192 days ago)

Was watching the news last night. It had the most outrageous and mind blowing scoop ever!! It talked about some female who supposedly remembers 2 of her previous births. She’s a doctor in this birth and it seems, she could remember all details of her previous births right from childhood. Her “current” parents took her to her 1st house. (GOD this sure is getting complicated) and she recognised everything and everyone. Eventually she even managed to convince all the members of the “old” family that she indeed had been Bindiya, by disclosing details only she would have known.
In her next birth, (2nd one), she happened to have been born in a remote village which is currently in Bangladesh. No one could take her there now for obvious reasons. In this particular birth she had been born to a Bengali Brahmin family. She remembers assamese folklore from that era! In *this* birth she died as a 9 year old girl in a car accident. The only thing done was that police records were verified and it was confirmed that there indeed had been such an incident on so n so date.
Now comes the even more complicated bit, her “current” birth relationships and how ppl handle this supernatural streak. (Gives *me* the jitters!) Her current husband was told of her “sixth sense” before marriage and also informed that she still frequents her “previous” maika and sasural! The husband in true indian tradition was only overjoyed to get such a rare life partner :-P.
So now the doctor has umpteen no of relationships to maintain. Imagine having to handle all the complications and pressures of your previous lives as well as of this life! Our creator must have had a reason for us to not remember our past lives. The human brain is a pretty complex thing. The newsreport showed just a 1 minute comment from a doctor on the scientific aspect of the whole reincarnation thing. The doc acknowledged that only 1/3rd of the brain is used in us mortals (shame!) and the other “subconscious” part probably stores/records events and memories. But what she definitely missed was that the human brain, a physical entity gets destroyed after someones death. How is it ever possible to retain all that info?! Lot of complex things happening behind the scene…
– reincarnated Blogger