Today

I am having ordinary day.

I went to the international krishimela (Agricultural Fest) at GKVK Hebbal. It is quite a large exhibition with a variety of stalls. I only went into the ones that interested me. I bought some ornamental flower tubers. The organisation was ok but a bit too dusty.

I just got the Compulsion *ing Heather Graham & Carrie-Anne Moss. I believe it is a story of mildly unhinged individuals who appear functional but go through life carrying a lot of personal pain. Hope to watch it soon.

I recently finished reading Life of Pi. The book gives a new dimension to the genre of magical realism. The spiritual elements explored although appear deep, to me, felt incomplete and forced. A lot of religious elements were drawn from mythology rather than religion(s). I plan to watch the movie soon. I think I will write about the book and the movie at length some other time.

Musings

I am currently listening to Shantaram audiobook.

I just downloaded Cloud Atlas movie. I have also just downloaded the audiobook. Hopefully I will get watch and listen to them.

I accidently came across what I thought to be the movie Ghatashraddha on DD Bharati. I have watched the movie earlier, it is a kannada movie by Kasaravalli based on a story by UR Ananthmurthy. This in contrast was in hindi, with kannada audio mixed in. It had a feel of a badly dubbed audio. It clearly had actors who worked exclusively in hindi movies. Most of all it had Nana Patekar. Nana, I remembered clearly was not in Ghatashraddha.

Then began the real nightmare. The ending began in the middle of the movie. The credits rolled. The middle continued. There were some beginning shots. The audio went mute. Languages changed. It ended again. Credits rolled again. They clearly had gotten the rolls of film mixed up, cut up, damaged and what not.

I had heard of this happening in theatres, but on national TV? I had presumed the digitised the program. Maybe they digitised this butchery!!!

DD was an excellent broadcaster. It is depressing to see them do this to their collection of masterpieces.

Back to the movie. The story has been remade as Diksha in hindi by a kashmiri film maker A Kaul. Patekar's performance was excellent as always. Manohar Singh has done an beautiful job. Where the kannada voiceovers came from, I know not.

Deepavali was uneventful.

I watched Pawan Kumar's Lucia a few days back. It is a beautiful movie. The use of folk literature gives it a fresh feel. The acting and casting is good. There has been a lot of hype that this is kannada's first crowd sourced movie. Nevertheless it is a very enjoyable movie. There are some isolated scenes inspired by 'Inception.' The theme itself is mostly original.

Hi

It has been a while.
I am being weaned off my medicines and it has not been easy.
I hope to post more regularly henceforth.
I read 2 cantos of ramayana after a very long time and I am pleased with myself, which by itself is very rare.

My Violin Story

The year was 2002. I had been crazy for a few months. I was on a liberal cocktail of psychotropic drugs and mental torture. For some reason this song kept playing on TV. I had never watched TV regularly in the then past. TV had opened up a new world to me. Things I thought for years were normal were revealed to be horrendous, my life had turned up-side-down. And this kept playing on the music channels.

Band: Bond
Album: Shine
Track: Shine

I have to admit, they are good. Classical crossover thought talked about a lot is done rarely, rarer is it done with style. I liked the music. I liked the beautiful girls too.

Perhaps, it was the lament of the violins, perhaps, the music resonated in me, perhaps, the girls [both Indian and gori] were beautiful, perhaps I listened to it too much, perhaps it was the Indian theme, perhaps it was the happy ending, perhaps it was the wedding in the warehouse, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps....

I wanted to learn to play the violin. 

Thus, began my relationship with instrumental music. It must be said, I am  musically challenged. I find it difficult to appreciate it. I don't easily see the intricacies of in it. I find it difficult to identify with it. I argue it may be because I was exposed to no music as a child or for that matter not even as a foetus. Music, I anticipate, will always be an uphill task for me, unlike the written word, but this is the story of how I was introduced to the violin.