Rainstorm and bingeing on books

1. Something to Declare (Essays on France and French Culture) by Julian Barnes

2. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

3. Made in America by Bill Bryson

4. Deluxe Turntable Scrabble (the game, not a book!)

were bought from Amazon last night. Barnes now joins McEwan, Ishiguro, Fry and Bryson as the most popular authors on my bookshelf. I do have 4 books by Graham Greene, but they were bought mostly due to the discount at the time of purchase, rather than chosen.

But that was not the event of the day.

The rumblings of the rather curiously named cyclone - Nargis, hit Bangalore with unexpected viciousness last night. 5 electric poles were uprooted. 2 fell on a bus and a car in front of me while I was driving. The driver and passengers of a Sumo next to me panicked and ran out, willingly getting drenched. All this while I was driving next to them! Thankfully the power supply was out. Hopefully no one got hurt. Further down, there were several trees uprooted and leaves and branches flying freely in the rain and wind and landing occasionally, abruptly on my car.


Was lucky to get home mostly untouched. Thank you.

If you were an Albiceleste follower like me...

this would warm your heart. What an ad!

The Lives of Others

The last time I had a severely cathartic experience, the kind when you have something burn you inside out due to the experience, as if someone left a cigarette inside your heart, was when I saw "No Man's Land." I maintain to this day that it is one of the finest movies ever.

The Lives of Others is one more in that genre. Incredibly well written, supremely poetic ending. Thank god for that woman due to whom I began reading Vikram Seth and then other poetry as a result. There is this unnerving scene within a scene in the movie when one of the main characters is referring to Lenin's description of Beethoven's Appassionata, saying something to the effect that he could not go on listening to it as he had a revolution on hand!

Please see it.
p.s. As my tribute to the movie, have begun reading The Dubliners by James Joyce and My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead

Coming back to Life

Listening to "A Spot of Bother" by Mark Haddon on an audio book. Thanks to my dear friend "hennu magale" as we call her :)

Cycled 11.5 km to Cubbon Park, ran 9 km and cycled back home. A colleague from Bombay joined the Bangalore office y'day and today we got him started off on running. He exceeded expectations by getting his fiancee to join!

What a glorious start to the weekend!

An April Sunday

This has been the best weekend in over a month.
Salvaged my scrabble rating a bit.
Managed to run a little over 5 miles, my longest since Bombay.
Managed to finish The Devil's Cup.
Found time to go out and buy a nice book, in a genre that I read little in, (Sci Fi) - The Dispossessed By Ursula Le Guin. The book comes highly recommended as does the author.
Went to a pub named Mojo's, just off Residency Road for the 1st time. They are run by the same folks who run Peco's and play excellent music.
And hey, some work got done as well.
And to top it all off, Ferrari won 1-2 at Bahrain. Not bad, eh?

30 plus, Jeetendra and other stories...

A long time ago, jumping Jack Jeetu was on TV advertising a product called 30+. The premise of the ad was that you lose some vitality when you cross 30 and hence needed supplements.

2 days ago in the Bangalore edition of BEQ 2008 (in which incidentally we got whipped and didn't even qualify), I answered something that evaded all teams on stage. Derek in his usual style asked my name and since the theme for this year was retro anyways, said "You are Dharmendra, I am Jeetendra!" and even had a pic taken with me and posed for the cameras!

Eerily enough I was reminded of Jeetu yet again as I turned 30 a few days ago. Nothing special happened except that I ran for the 2nd time in less than a week. I have now resumed running after the docs at Manipal have said there is nothing apparently wrong with me :) Add to that a fun lunch with office folks. This year's reading target has taken a huge hit (no pun intended) with current work load. I plan to remedy that with a sabbatical later in the year.

For now, hope to recoup on the 3 day weekend