A few days ago I wrote about my meeting with Dilip at the launch of his book, Roadrunner. Now, Dilip has also put up a nice post about the event and this blogger.

Read it here: Bloggers About Roadrunner.

To top it all, he has recommended my book. Now that makes up for the fact that I did not let him pay for my book.

Hindustan Times carried a short and nice review of my book, “Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories”.

Click here to read the review.

In case you are not able to view the epaper link, the review is reproduced below:

Want to buy the book? Click here to order online and get it shipped to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy.

Fantastic Contraption – This game is addictive. More so for people who have an inclination towards things like Lego bricks and building simple gadgets. The game involves taking a pink object from the “workshop” to a pink colored box called, simply, the “goal”.

Now, the object to be taken across to the goal maybe a simple disc or a square. You get various tools like rotating wheels, fluid rods and straight rods, and some other structures. These tools are to be used in your workshop, connect them with the object and then let the contraption run.

Might appear to be a bit complicated to understand here, but just take the tour of the game and you will be well on your way to at least a few hours of fun!
Link to the game here (http://fantasticcontraption.com/)

Tip: Thanks to Ashwini for sending this across!

My tryst with Dr. Seuss happened when I performed for The Script’s production – The Lorax.

Lorax is an interesting poem written by Dr. Seuss, who predominantly wrote for children. However, all his works had more than a clear relevance to adults as well. Lorax was a poem which depicted man’s devastating impact on the environment and urged people to develop a sense of responsibility towards mother nature.

In the poem, the character Lorax is the representative of all things green. And when Once-ler, owing to his ever increasing greed, starts chopping off truffula trees and depriving the Brown Bar-ba-loots their habitat, the Lorax appears in front of the Once-ler and appraises him of the disaster that he is causing by doing all this.

As is evident, Dr. Seuss was famous for coining terms and words that had no meaning but brought out the underlying concept beautifully. You can read The Lorax here. It is a beautiful poem and I thoroughly enjoyed performing this work on stage.

The Lorax, was one of Dr. Seuss’ most controversial works and many claimed that it was unfair to the logging industry.

Recently, I saw a movie adaption of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! This is a story about an elephant (Horton) who, by accident, gets in possession of a speck. The speck rests on a clover which the elephant carries around with him as an ornament. One fine day, he begins to hear voices coming from the speck. It is then revealed to us, the viewers, that the speck is a world in itself, with people there living ordinary lives very similar to ours. What happens next and how the elephant manages to save this speck from all external influences is a part of the story.

What I found more relevant is the metaphorical usage of the speck. As we all know by now, our planet too is a speck in the cosmic dimensions and although we might be fretting a lot about our daily lives, it could be that everything is based on chance and depends on an elephant living in another world who is carrying this speck around. It brings in some perspective of our place in this universe. Simplistic in its story line, Horton hears a Who! is a great movie with a universal appeal, if I may use that word.

You can read more about Dr. Seuss’ life in this Wikipedia article.

Caramel. Sweet, brown and very very sticky. Nadine Labaki’s Lebanese film, “Caramel” does justice to these parameters of that word. Shot in various hues of brown, the movie is definitely sweet to the point of being sticky since the time you have tasted it and walked out of the cinema hall.

On the Friday gone by, Mrs. DhiOnlyOne and I found ourselves rushing into a cinema hall which was almost empty. The title roll had started and swirls of thick caramel rolled across the screen in various forms. Pretty soon, we found ourselves in a beauty salon run by 3 girls. Nadine Labaki herself acts as one of the central characters, Layale. Layale runs the beauty salon along with two of her friends, Nisrin and Rima. Three young ladies, living a free life and having their share of dreams and hopes. Then there is Jamale, a struggling actress who is also fighting a losing battle with age.

Layale is shown as a strong contemporary woman, who has dared to confront traditionalism in the face. She is obsessively in love with a married man. Grappling between her unconventional love and the aspirations of her parents, her life questions the foundations of modern day society’s stand on love and relationships. Nisrin is on her way to get married and has her own problem to deal with; that being that she is not a virgin and is getting married to a Muslim. What are the consequences of being found out, what are the consequences of being abandoned, and what are the consequences of losing someone you strongly love? Again, Caramel focuses on sexuality and the moral paraphernalia that it comes closely bound with. Rima, another character who is played out wonderfully well by Joanna Moukarzel, is a shy girl, preferring to not indulging in the usual feminine activities of making oneself up. Rima, on the other hand, has a liking towards women. Questioning sexuality is the central theme of this beauty salon.

Close to the salon is a tailoring shop run by an old lady, Rose, who is struggling to make ends meet by stitching people’s clothes. She has taken on the additional responsibility of looking after her mentally challenged sister, Lili. Caramel brings out the aspect of unconditional love in various snippets. Layale’s love for her married man is a standout picture. But what is more appreciative is how Rose looks after Lili, a person who cannot reciprocate nor appreciate Rose’s gestures. Yet, Rose goes on. Smile after smile. In a particular scene where Rose goes to deliver the clothes of one of the girls at the Salon, the girls ask her to sit down and chat over coffee. But Rose politely refuses citing that Lili would be alone at home. A woman who does not succumb to her personal freedom solely to ensure that her sister gets her freedom to do things in her own different world.

How do the lives of these women unfurl is what Caramel is all about. Does Layale break the barriers of society, does Rose finally give in to life’s finer pleasures and do Rimi and Nisrin get what they want out of life?

Set in Beirut, Lebanon, Caramel is not just a collection of stories of these people. It is more of a blend of life and its vagaries. Sweet, brown and very very sticky.

Image courtesy: www.caramelmovie.com

As I had mentioned some days ago, I lost my mobile phone at one of the Cafe Coffee Day (commonly, and irritatingly called CCD these days) outlets. The phone I lost was a Nokia N72 and the only reason I was frustrated was that it had various applications installed which had made my life a little simpler. One of them was an application called mCheck which allowed me to make my bill payments directly from the phone. The another most used application on that phone was the Gmail app and the Opera mini browser.

Therefore, I was very keen on ensuring that my next phone also supports applications, which are predominantly made for the Symbian operating system. After doing a 10 minute research (to be correct, the research was outsourced to a friend and a colleague who logged on to the net and figured out the best possible features for my budget), I went ahead and bought the Sony Ericsson K530i. This phone is surprisingly power-packed with tons of features and yet sports a small and sleek design.

Some of the features that I really “dig” (to use CCD parlance) about this phone:
1. It has a Symbian operating system, hence you can run many third party applications.
2. It has a built-in RSS reader. For me, the Google reader is the next most accessed product after mail and blogs. I absolutely love having this RSS reader in my phone.
3. It supports 3G. Of course, this is premature, but just for kicks I am happy that this phone would support a video conference whenever our networks become 3G ready.
4. The software that comes with the phone is, simply put, extremely utilitarian. I have never found it this easy to synchronize my contacts and calendar appointments from my PC to my phone.
5. The built-in suite of applications include Music, Photo and Video editing software, which is basic, but quite handy to use.
6. It comes with the basic set of tools that are nowadays essential for any mobile phone – a camera, music player, speaker phone support and handset support.

In case you do have this phone, allow me to point you to an excellent source of useful applications for your phone. And do remember to download the latest Opera browser from the Opera Mini website.