Chanthana manivaathil

Never been a big Venugopal fan but the song Chanthana manivaathil is probably his best. The music and the lyrics are just awesome and the rendering is spot on. Kudos also to Raveendran who had this knack to get the best out of every singer. Its a pity that these two got associated for just this one number.

Humility by T.S. Eliot

There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

~ T. S. Eliot (Excerpt from East Coker, Four Quartets)

Tennis my saviour

If there is a panacea for every ailment, for me it has to be tennis, playing or watching the game, there isnt a bigger or better relaxation for me. I am glad that i will be resuming tennis today after a lull of more than a month. I am just waiting to grind on the clay courts here and clear off my head and get ready for the weeks ahead. Tennis,thou art my saviour at all times.

Equations

As I begin to write this I need to put in one quote that I always have loved "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page". If you can replace "travel" with a more plausible "staying away from home", I think this quote is exactly what I am feeling at this moment. Life has many equations I never realized and I am trying to get a hang of it. I am now in Germany for the past 3 months with a small 2 week break in between when I went back home. I havent stayed away from India for this long my entire life. This period has helped me to get down to brass tacks about people. I am all consumed in various thoughts and feelings, I never knew i had so much emotions in me, maybe an undercurrent somewhere that was lurking in deep waters but never rising to the surface, all it needed was a trigger and the ripple effect began, each wave more intense than the one before bringing with it a cornucopia of dormant thoughts and when these thoughts faded away, leaving behind an emptiness, as if my mind is holding me in sardonic contempt and asking me to swim in this lacuna. Those who know me would vouch me to be insensitive and a complete loner. I am happy to realize i am anything but that, I am not as selfish as what people perceive me to be. In these 3 months, I have realized at various moments that I have always cared and thought first about other people and only then about myself. I have interacted with a lot of people in this period, with a few I have felt a bond that could last a lifetime while some others have left me with a strong sense of detachment. This has pained me beyond measure. I have no idea why some of them have left this indelible imprint in me. I dont believe that I wont be able to get through this trying phase, I know I will and I will emphatically, but I also know that these equations would change me forever, make me a better person, but somewhere in the future I will also look back to these days and treat it with disdain, even have the ability to trivialize this period as an afterthought. Speaking of afterthoughts, one more quote before I sign off from this post. Robert Frost: "In three words, I can sum up everything I have learnt about life: it goes on".

Tunes

While on music, there are some songs I cant get enough of:

Losing My Religion - REM
She keeps the home fires burning - Ronnie Milsap - thanks RR for introducing me to this great voice
Broken Arrow - Rod Stewart
500 Miles - Hooters
Turn That Radio On - Ronnie again
Mrs Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel

To name a few, of course there are a lot more, but these are the first that comes to mind.

Solo humming

Its fascinating with the mind, isnt it? Suddenly out of the blue I am humming Sprinsgsteen's Dancing in the Dark. It just came to my mind suddenly, no clue when, and since then i have been humming portions of the song. A song, I havent heard in ages. What was the trigger then for it to come to me.

Even as I write, I am listening to it. Its an awesome number, a very moodie solo, but I am just amazed at how this particular song came into my mind all of a sudden, beats me.

Done and dusted

I am kinda of confused where this blog should be posted, its either here or on my tennis space.
I decide to post it here with a promise that there would be no tennis jargons or dissection of the game. That comes later on my other page.

Its been a week now that Federer lost the 5 setter at Wimbledon, my mind has been wallowing in a labyrinth of emotions ever since. On the one hand i am now pretty sure that maestro is done with, but on the other hand, I keep my hopes alive with the way he played the French. On the one hand, I think he is done since he lost after having a 2 sets lead and that has never happened, on the other I think he still has a slam or two considering the inspired tennis he played to beat Djokovic at the French.

Its a sinking feeling, for I havent seen a better player than Federer in all the years I have been following the game. He is definitely the most talented to have played the game. An epitaph will follow when Federer hangs up his raquet. Federer not the favourite or Federer not in the main draw is something that myself and all Fed fans should start getting used to and fast...i think we are almost there and nothing could be worse than that.

Foodie

I am not a big eater but I like my food to taste good, albeit whatever little I eat. So when my female colleague, MP, invited us over for dinner, I was sceptic. The confidence she had in her own culinary skills wasnt encouraging.


The aspect of sumptious food that has always fascinated me is the process of making it. Its a skill to cook good food, get the portions just right and also make it look delicious. A skill that I can never possess. One thing that I have learnt about myself is that I am not a perfectionist and can never be. A good cook is a perfectionist, period. No looking glass needs to tell you that.


So yesterday was the D-day for her. And she took charge just as she had to. The five of us were encouraged to contribute in various activities that I mentioned earlier has fascinated me. I have always maintained a safe distance from the kitchen even at home, and so that some earlier disastrous episodes of my brief forays into the kitchen does not come back to haunt me, I decided to stay back and wait for the end product.


2 of my male colleagues were not to be undone. They turned out to be experts in cutting vegetables and making sure its cut the right way. Of course there was other delicacies in store of us along the way, be it PM's almost innocuous one liners that tickled our funny bones or SB's devouring of raw vegetables which even today continues to amaze me.

Ok, now for the end product. The pulav turned out to be brilliant, its the best food I have eaten in Walldorf to say the least and thats probably an understatement. The ingredients and spices seemed to just right. To go with was Raitha which made the combination all the more awesome. Ok, so MP wasnt an amateur afterall. No wait, we are not done yet. Dessert was mouthfulls of flavored buttermilk that had me asking for more.

It was just after midnight that we started the feast. As the age old adage goes, the rewards are sweet for the one who waits. So now its again a wait for more invites from MP and more exercise for the taste buds.

Wein

So we had to choose another country to take a tour of yesterday. As usual, our planning sucks big time and we could just about make a decision on Friday. By this time, the tickets to Venice had exhausted. The tickets to Vienna were still available and we decided to take it. I am not a good travel writer and this blog isnt a travel log, so I wont go into the details of what we saw and did. However, its safe to say that I enjoyed every second of what we did yesterday. The travel by bus on two successive nights was tiring, but apart from that we had a fun trip. The hop on hop off trips we took gave a great overview of the city I am a tad disappointed that we could not enter a musuem as there were several around but its great to save the best for the next travel.

Mediocrity

Yesterday there was a debate with my colleague over 3 idiots. While he found the film great, I just found it mediocre. For me a film should be great in what it tries to convey and 3 idiots should be looked at purely an entertainer. In that way it was a nice film. However, 3 idiots tried to make a point and fell flat on its head. It was a film with false pretentions. The other flaws were the character sketching of Aamir and some average writing. So what could have been a masterpiece was reduced to a mundane Bollywood masala film.

On the other hand I liked Dabangg totally because it was a good masala film and did not try to be anything but that. But then this is only my opinion :-).

On the rise

Just returned from a 3 hour tennis hit and it feels great. The campus here has 6 clay courts and its maintained wonderfully well. Have played on 3 of those by now and hope to cover all 6 before I return. Its great to play the ball on the rise and Iam trying to do that on the forehand. I also have a flat forehand which I am trying to hit with a little bit of spin. Lets see how that works out.

Frankfurt

So we spent the day moving from Walldorf to Frankfurt through Mannheim and back. Since none of us who travelled had the sagacity to plan the trip in advance, ended up spending just about 3 hours in Frankfurt. We reached the city at an uncouth hour in the evening, missed the hop-on-hop-off tour of the city, ended up walking up the city ring and eating at a Punjabi dhaba and then we were headed back.
However it was a day well spent, the long walks and the nagging pain in my tired limbs has a soporific effect, a night of sound sleep beckons.

Pitstop

Have taken a pit stop at Walldorf for a few months. Its summer time and therefore not a bad decision.