A Sandy Adventure!

The thing with apocalyptic American movies is it looks really dreadful in the movies and you hardly wonder the 'what ifs'. But then as you all might have come to know, Sandy did happen and wrecked havoc. If you have not heard about it then I will not really judge you. Because guess what, even I took it pretty lightly and went ahead with my plans of travelling to NJ/NY over the weekend of 27/28th October.

My adventure started on saturday 27th when unaware of what was approaching (not unaware but unprepared more like), my return flight to california got cancelled. Panic mode and some frantic calls to the airlines later, none of which went through due to the congestion in the network, I made peace with the fact that I was to brave the hurricane sitting at home. We lost power on Monday evening and then slowly the connection with the outside world was lost. Well we were saving phone battery for emergency calls and messages and the phone signals were also getting weaker.

Ticket to ride to europe! Much fun
when played in candle light.

Thankfully the friend's house had stove and hot water running on gas, so we were not so famished on the warmness and food front. Every day we would divide the chores voluntarily cook, eat, clean utensils and then get down to real business. Sitting idly, trying to read or play boardgames. Playing board games was the real savior as it kept everyone pepped up.

The biggest ordeal for us was accepting the fact that we could not work on a weekday and not feel guilty about it. The other factor for worry was the heat at home. Slowly the temperature inside the home was dropping to a little unbearable values.
By day 3 everyone was desperately seeking to go out, check the damage and get back to normal life.

We headed out to shops where everyone was busy stocking up for the uncertain power outage and the gas stations had super long lines to stock up fuel for generators. We started getting news that some areas were really badly affected with flooding. But thankfully nothing bad had happened where we were staying. So it just meant an extended power cut and  more board games and food.

The power cut officially ended on thursday which to everyone's relief meant no more sitting inside home in layers and be able to connect to the internet and outside world.
To my shock the damage was really bad when we got the gist of all news of the last couple of days.

Well, I was able to fly back on saturday and did start missing the life of minimal interaction with outside world!

~nightflier

P.S. This post is almost a week late. And now there's a snow storm on the east coast. Hope things do not turn out to be as bad.

On languages

Sometimes I wonder what makes me use 3-4-5 languages in the same conversation over a thread of 2-3 sentences. Like when I am super comfortable talking to someone I will use an eclectic mix of hindi, english, marathi, french, japanese, computer (well yeah!), german (whatever little knowledge I have) and talk. 

On the same note if this is how I am evolving as a language user then what will my kids talk in ?

At work the emphasis is on english mostly. But sometimes I blurt into this mode where my mind just cannot express itself in one language. I am thinking this is my inadequacy.

Though I do not hope to become a purist* in terms of using any language, I wonder if this is the consequence of wanting to have too many life experiences (not that I have had many, but then I love having new experiences. get the idea ?) and then running out of resources to contain them.

May be I need to venture beyond the need to express. Whatever that may be.

~nightflier

P.S. good grammar and less typos always pleasing!

cloud atlas

I know there are lots of exciting and thrilling things happening in my life, but I watched cloud atlas last night.
And I am wondering why do powerful emotions shown in movies move me so much. I think the reason behind getting moved by movies/books/nature/art is a void being filled by the creativity of the writer/director/actor/creator.

No wonder cloud atlas is a brilliant movie, as it narrates the very weird, sometimes disconnected and at times connected by the threads of kindness, love, empathy, humanness 6 different stories set in 6 timelines. Of course its a difficult movie to sit through given its length and confusing starcast (same actors in different roles). 

There are movies for the sake of movies and entertainment and there are movies which make you wonder and dissect and ponder. Cloud Atlas unlike the book which is a pretty difficult read proves to be one such film. Its vista is colorful and so wondrous that you would either hate it or love it.

~nightflier

Goodness and kindness

Some of my favorite childhood memories are tied around time spent with extended family. During any wedding the entire gang of cousins would come together. Though who we grew up to become is a totally different story, these are some cherished times I am sure. During one of my cousin sister's wedding I ended up reaching the destination an entire week earlier than my parents on my aunt's insistence. Yeah, despite being a cry baby about staying away from home.

Every evening during that time, we would all play badminton on the street till 11 pm post dinner and then move the party indoors to carrom and ludo. This one older cousin of mine always made sure that in the game of badminton he was on my side and helped me scrape through the rallies with his timely saves. That to me was pure goodness. It still is. Strange how one looks up to a smallest act of kindness as a child.

This cousin passed away today. Last I saw him was probably 3 years back playing with his daughter.

Death. Timely. Untimely.
Takes away so much.
Nothing remains the same.

~nightflier

Argo and random rambling about movies

Yesterday I was generally feeling sad and nostalgic after reading about Yash Chopra's death. (Have watched most of movies directed by him except for Faasle, Parampara and Joshila). The thing is I have got watching movies in my genes from my father. He himself loves watching movies, Dev Anand, Amithabh Bachchan to be specific and he has never questioned my fanfare about movies. Though I am not certain what he enjoys the most about movies in general, but I am sure we all watch movies for a bit of escapism and adventure. As I have grown up, my movie taste and expectations have also changed. Even though I have drooled over sappy, poetic romances our hindi movies normally depicted in my childhood, I think I love myself a '500 days of summer' and 'before sunrise' as well. Having said that the starry eyed teenager in me believed in the super cheesy line 'someone somewhere is made for you'. Almost. Its very hard for me to imagine myself as a person without movies (seriously too many movies have been watched in this lifetime till now and an equally good number still remain unseen!). If books gave me fodder to imagine new worlds, movies made those worlds real and tangible. So I am not going to imagine a life without movies or books. But I will instead talk about this movie called Argo and how fantastic it is!

[if you are planning to watch the movie then my post won't really hurt your plans. But then you might not want to read it]

Its not just true but fantastical that a CIA agent made an entire nation believe that a bunch of American Embassy officers having taken refuge at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran, were actually part of a sci-fi film crew and flew them out of the country. All this happened during the Iran hostage crisis. So this level of make-believe is just so awesome! In depicting the tale, Ben Affleck the director takes no sides, has no bias about motives of the USA or Islamic extremists. He is telling the story of a man on a rescue mission and he does that with flair! The drama builds upto last 15 minutes where every scene is nail biting (or curse inducing, if you know what I mean). This is laced with fine, fine dialogue. And some politically incorrect upfront jokes about political systems, bureaucracy and hollywood. 

Alan Arkin as the typical LA producer is the funny life of the movie. An entire backdrop of a 'fake movie' is elaborately constructed with the help of John Goodman and Arkin. 'The best bad idea' Mendez (played by Ben Affleck) got, gains momentum in true Hollywood fashion. Most amusing is the scene when the extremists at the airport actually get convinced by a set of storyboards about a sci-fi movie. Even they become starry eyed kids who would love them a star wars. 

These and many such moments make Argo extremely human, enjoyable and want you to repeat after Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin's character name) 
'Argo! F**k Yourself!'

To the power of movies and make-believe-ism!

~nightflier

Templates

Some templates refuse to die. The one's created with friends, family, strangers, teachers, work-people, books, the iPad. With oneself.
There were times when I wanted to wallow in self pity. These days that template does not seem to exist. Or may be its just pretending to be gone. Coma may be ?
Good or bad. I always thought self pity in its only positive sense brings me perspective. About life. Things undone. Letters unwritten. Feelings unexpressed and unexplored.

Meeting so many new people. Life flying by you, waving at you, teasing you. That's when self pity seems like a thing from another planet. Where you may just stop by its side and wonder what's this tiny little creature doing in my garden ? Then you delicately lift it up and hold it in your hands, caress it even. And tell it politely to not to be in your garden anymore. You may even help it cross the street and leave it by the bus stop. Go take the road you tell it. And like any obedient visitor from another planet it embarks on its journey. To whoever.

Won't you want to get rid of/recreate some templates ?

~nightflier

P.S. My current favorite songs Hindi Zahra – Kiss & Thrills Maria Doyle Kennedy – The Most Beautiful People Are Broken

Texas reloaded!

2 years ago around the same time of the year I lived in Dallas for more than a month. So when we were planning a college friends reunion and things moved from the west coast to the southern state, I felt a bit reluctant to visit Texas. Again! I mean Austin, Dallas same difference right ? WRONG.

Specially with the 'keep austin weird' thing going on. So anyway, the texas part apart, I did what one can do best in Austin. Eat, binge drink and eat and chill out. To top it off it rained most of the weekend and that just helped the above mentioned activities even more.

my crumpled version of the esther's
show guide :D

Few touristy things like visiting the UT austin campus which is super beautiful and capitol which is the regular state building, also happened. And a sketch comedy show at Esther's was thoroughly enjoyed. My general tiredness and enthusiastic-lady-behind-me's jolly laughter aside. After some pub hopping on 6th street (we went to the east side because we were tired and well we were'nt really following dress code), saturday was called off. Accompanying me in these little adventures were snita, advait, shayok, nikhil and a lot of other fun people (who don't blog/tweet).

The best outing of this trip was getting together at Trudy's over their famous house martinis, served in giant-ass lassi style glasses. The food which accompanied was equally yummy! Saturday afternoon saw us at Able's on the lake, with some amazing grilled chicken salad (tired of wraps/burgers/breads already!) and the famous Texas tea. Perfect recipe for a lazy afternoon. Not so perfect if you have activities planned for the evening.

the pennybracker bridge! from snita's camera

Apart from this Masala wok, Bombay express (Please forgive me pani puri gods for trying a plate in texas, when I can get the real stuff back home so easily.) Taco deli, Amy's and such local eating out happened.

The icing of the trip was the smallish hike to the hill overlooking the 360 loop and the Pennybacker bridge. If I could, I would visit Austin for this part of the town. Just to sit and may be play some chess/scrabble.

~nightflier