The Customary Post That Gives Hope

Much has changed around since the last blog post. In fact, three posts have been published since my last theme change, disregarding the two asides posts, and I sit here contemplating switching to more attractive themes. Common sense, and a little bit of inertia, would reign here and the blog stays as it were -- in appearance at least.

One would wonder, though, why someone wouldn't update his personal blog as often as he would, say, some other blogs. There is no clear reason, really. The personal blog would be updated when there is an inspiration -- a will to write something; anything actually. It would, however, seem preposterous to assume that nothing seemed even remotely inspirational enough to trigger some thought juices, all these months. So I will seek to answer these piercing questions from despondent readers with excuses such as 'being busy' and 'lack of anything worth writing about'.

Which begs the question, 'Why today, then?'

I am rather happy to announce that I am in India at the moment. In fact, I have been for the past 3 weeks here. Chennai represents the best place to be in India during the wintry months of December and January; the temperature hovers between 16 to 26C. Hardly something, one would describe as chilly.

The same however, could not be said of the traffic, dust and the general pollution. I've never really been a fan of Al Gore going on about his theories -- I do believe in global warming part, but never really got why Gore got so worked up about it -- but I do see now, why he's been a tad anxious. The dust and smoke left me with a bad cold (or was it flu? I can't decide) for the past week.

I don't know, maybe it's my immune system acting up; the gentle environment back in the States can compromise your body's security system.

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It's interesting to see the amount of paranoia one can get enveloped in, after spending a little over a year in the States. I've been surprised with myself about this; I think twice now before drinking water at a perfectly decent restaurant -- which isn't like me at all. Vicki's Maggi in those good old Roorkee days taught me enough about drinking and eating just about anything that came one's way.

I am sure I would be my normal self soon. But by then I would be heading back to the US. Just a week to go, now.

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I have been pleasantly surprised at the online-ness of things, as far as booking tickets goes. And I am talking about railway and inter-state bus tickets here. I know the railways had this online ticketing thing a while back. But then, it used to be a case of booking tickets online and getting them delivered to your place. Now it's a case of booking them online and printing out the pdf form of the ticket, and of course, carrying some form of ID while travelling. The same is true of inter-state bus transport. At least, it's true of Karnataka.

Old hat for my fellow resident Indian readers, but refreshing for our lot.

While on the subject of transport, it is also nice to see air-conditioned Volvo buses being introduced in Chennai (I hear Bangalore also has done that). I am talking about the bus service for intra-city commutes; not the long distance, inter-city/state ones. They aren't too expensive either, although a little improvement in the frequency would help.

I like the progress, but still wouldn't buy into the hype NDTV Profit would want me (and especially, my family members) believe; that India will reign supreme -- economically and otherwise -- within a decade.

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I am yet to watch Billa which, I hear, is an extremely kewlly shot movie. And it is incidentally Ajith's biggest hit of his, rather undistinguished, career. That, somehow, doesn't sit too easily on my ears. A movie that picked Nayanthara, of all actresses, to sport a two-piece bikini couldn't be that big. But it is customary for me to go and watch a Tamil flick in the cinema hall during every one of my visits to Chennai. So there.

While still on the movie, and for the benefit of North Indian (or rather, non-Tamil) readers, Billa (circa 2007) is a remake of a 1980 film of the same name. The 1980 movie was a Rajnikanth starrer, which sort of explains the hype surrounding this one; stories about Rajni hugging Ajith after watching the premiere of the movie, thus expressing his satisfaction at the remake, were also good enough reasons for someone to want to watch the movie, apparently.

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And I am not sure how many are actually reading this. So kindly drop by and say 'Aye'. Would make this exercise (of writing this post) well worth the while.