The Other Side of Life

"Why isn't my life like a situation comedy? Why don't I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren't my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don't my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well being when I have problems? ...I gotta get my life some writers." Well, Calvin has a point there, doesn't he? I mean, we do spend around 9 years of our average lifetime glued to the Idiot box. Doesn't life start imitating this wacky, unreal form of art somewhere? I think it does! And so, I decided to take a quick run down my memory lane and do double check on how my life sniffed its way into the K-world of melodramatic soaps and eye-rolling villains, overdone make-up and glycerin tears, immaculately timed drum rolls and shock camera angles..And I was surprised how simple situations could be dressed up as these awesomely farcical Hindi serial scenes. Have a look at this one: SCEN...

DISCLAIMER: All characters appearing in this work are ENTIRELY fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any claims of resemblance may be reported to the writer "personally"... :-) For the sake of this story, I'll call the lead protagonist Yours Truly, and while we are at introductions, it is also worth bringing to your attention that Yours Truly would have preferred a life of blissful anonymity, but she had to eventually bow down to intense public demands... When I first heard this story, a favorite dialogue from F.R.I.E.N.D.S popped into my head, where Phoebe tells Ross, "Everyone has a thing..Yours is Divorce!" Well, Yours Truly has a thing too..Of all the weird things on this beautiful planet of ours, her thing rides on three, unnaturally small, toyish wheels, coloured straight out of a child's coloring book in Yellow and Green, and in Yours Truly's words, driven by the most "devastatingly devilish, cun...

This is what I love about music..Every time I hesitate about something, every time my mind refuses to register the truth, every time my heart yearns to shout out stashed away emotions, every time my soul wants to break free from complications, there is a song that does the speaking for me! And so when I heard "Cast No Shadow" by Oasis, I was not surprised, neither at the timing that I heard the song at, nor at the alarming accuracy with which it converted my thoughts into words..For the privilege of the uninitiated, here are the words of this absolutely marvellous piece, by my reigning favorites, Oasis. CAST NO SHADOW Here's a thought for every man  Who tries to understand what is in his hands  He walks along the open road of Love & Life  surviving if he can  Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say  Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay  Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say  and as he faced the sun he cast no s...

An innocent remark by a friend recovering from a shockingly awesome trip to Goa propelled me into writing this post..After a rather longish detailed description of the trip, he quipped, "You have NO IDEA how rocking beaches are..We totally ought to have one in Delhi.." To him and to all those souls whose single Goa trip gets them talking about beaches, here goes the post... Well, I do have some idea of beaches, having spent many a summer vacation at my grandparents'  house on the beachside in the tranquil city of Vishakhapatnam ..To give you a slightly better picture of how our itinerary revolved around beaches, here's a sneak peak:    05: 00 am:  The house starts buzzing with activity, the harmony of the Suprabhatam falling on all ears..Just to re-emphasise, I am talking about the ungodly hour of 05:00 am in the morning..(Friends who know me and my infamous associations with alarm clocks well would appreciate the importance of this statement! ) Once you are up and ...

LOL ...That is easily one of the lamest titles I have ever seen! :) So here's the deal. When I got my hands on a Robin Cook book after a gap of 4 years, I would be lying if I said I was happy..Because, I was ecstatic..Robin Cook was probably never the best author on earth, and most definitely, not a winner of awards, but it worked for me back then. And so running into his latest book sent my adrenaline into a tizzy, taking me back to those days of confused young minds, debating how to sneak in a book in between hectic coaching classes and teachers driving poor minds crazy! I would be understating if I said I liked Robin Cook..I loved Robin Cook, and I had in fact set the indelible record of reading each and every one of his books, till of course, he decided to write one more. And so I had to read Crisis. Crisis is a fast paced story set in the suburbs of Boston. The lead protagonist, Dr. Craig Bowman is a hard working dedicated medical practitioner, caught in an increasingly deep...