My forecast for the day says:

Keep your eyes, ears and heart open when someone is trying to speak to you. You need to read their words, body language and their intentions in order to truly understand what it is they’re trying to say.

Forecast Courtesy: astrology.com
Too bad. I have been sleeping so far and I see no reason to wake up during the remaining part of the day.
I guess that someone who is trying to speak to me shall have to wait for tomorrow. But then, tomorrow my forecast might recommend me to sleep all day. What then?

Palty palty, we want palty – Devil and Dhi Only One in front of Chilli’s house.

Po Bronson writes an article titled “What Should I Do With My Life?”
If this question has bothered you in the past or is currently bothering you, please do read the article.
Excerpts:

Of course, addressing the question, What should I do with my life? isn’t just a productivity issue: It’s a moral imperative. It’s how we hold ourselves accountable to the opportunity we’re given. Most of us are blessed with the ultimate privilege: We get to be true to our individual nature. Our economy is so vast that we don’t have to grind it out forever at jobs we hate. For the most part, we get to choose. That choice isn’t about a career search so much as an identity quest.

And this is where the second big insight came in: Your calling isn’t something you inherently “know,” some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right.

Shouldn’t I make money first — to fund my dream? The notion that there’s an order to your working life is an almost classic assumption: Pay your dues, and then tend to your dream. I expected to find numerous examples of the truth of this path. But I didn’t find any.

Now, what should I do with my life? Or will life do something about me?

Good morning and we already have another week on our hands, ladies and gentlemen.

On Friday night I watched Rang de Basanti. During the movie and a little after it I felt that the movie was good, but not as great as my expectations had wanted it to be.
However, over that night and the next day, I have been thinking about it and the movie has been playing all around in my head.

My verdict: It’s a mini-masterpiece (as NDTV put it). If you haven’t watched it yet, go watch it. The music rocks (I liked Rahman’s music in this movie after the utter crap he dished out in Mangal Pandey). In fact the music rocks so much that I have been humming the songs all through the weekend.
If you liked Dil Chahta Hai, then you will love this for sure. It is a slightly more serious film than DCH, and it rocks slightly more than DCH for that very reason.
Incidentally, I watched DCH once again on Thursday.

Nursing a headache right now. Tea from a vending machine is like having canned fruit juice. You really don’t enjoy it all that much.

I’m a Mazda RX-8!

You’re sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you’re willing to do your part.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Aye saala – a Rang de Basanti promo by Hitler’s Soul.
Read it now!

Jeremy Clarkson on ‘The Worst Word in the language‘

Funny and a must-read for all those who share similar sentiments about improper usage of words in the English language.

If you send a letter to a client saying “my team and me look forward to meeting with yourself next Wednesday”, be prepared for some disappointment. Because if I were the client I’d come to your office all right. Then I’d stand on your desk and relieve myself.

I’m not a grammar freak — I can eat, shoot and then take it or leave it — but when someone says “myself” instead of “me” I find it more offensive than if they’d said “spastic wog”.

Hilarious!
Article posted on: TimesOnline
Link obtained via: Arts&Letters Daily

Running and breathing hard, he paused for a minute to look behind him. His pursuer was nowhere to be seen. Was he running all this while for nothing? Or was there someone who was indeed chasing him?

He sat down next to the light pole, gasping for breath and looking down at the asphalted road. The sand particles on the road seemed to form a circling kaleidoscopic image in his mind. He recalled that hour of the morning when he had just walked into the tea shop and had begun cleaning the used teacups of the first set of customers. What was it that they had ordered? He shook his head which was beginning to get filled with irrelevant questions.
He looked back again. The street was filled with people busy haggling with shopkeepers. He didn’t understand a word being spoken – his deafness had robbed him of the vice of hearing when he was born. He was, in a strange manner, happy that he couldn’t hear. Sound, after all, would have surely disturbed the fragile balance of the street, its people and their emotive movements. Why do people need sound anyway? In his mind he could concoct various movements and associate them with any sound he wanted to. Any sound he liked. His depth of hearing was in his mind and it was immense. Nothing could distract him from the silent orchestra that played all the while in his mind. He allowed himself a flicker of a smile.

He looked up at the street light and knew it was time to let go. The white light glared in his face. It was unusually bright and he associated the sound of the clarinet to this streak of light. The sound of the clarinet which HE felt was appropriate. The sound grew louder, the light grew brighter and his mind numbed. The silent orchestra stopped playing. He gasped and held his hand up high, the five fingers of his palm stretched out, wanting to cling on to something but finding only thin air instead. He had to let go. His time was up. He closed his eyes and dropped his hand.
He, finally, became a part of the symphony of the Universe.

A round-up of the headlines that you don’t normally read (due to lack of interest and time):

• In case you are still in school and are going to start your first lesson in geometry, you might as well chuck it. – Amazonian hunter-gatherers who lack written language and who have never seen a math book score highly on basic tests of geometric concepts, researchers said on Thursday in a study that suggests geometry may be hard-wired into the brain.
• A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan’s fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.
• Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth’s surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday.
• If you were born during stressful times (and if you are a boy), then its good news for you. – Populations of boys born in stressful times enjoy an advantage their whole lives, living longer, on average, than males born in times of peace and prosperity, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
• Something to rejoice for the women – Men enjoy others’ misfortune more than women.

  All news courtesy: Reuters.
  

My 34976349th attempt at a short tale.
————–

Sir returned to his cubicle with a box full of shirts. The shirts were to be distributed to his team of 40 people who had met their targets much before the final deadline. He removed one shirt from the box. It was an Oxford blue, collared, full-sleeved shirt. It had his company’s name and his team’s name embroidered above the breast pocket. He nonchalantly slid the shirt back into the box, having already received numerous such mementos in his short stint at his office so far.
He finished distributing 30 shirts, his other team members being either on vacation or in meetings.

He left the remaining 10 shirts in his cubicle, picked his shirt and started climbing down the stairs. On the 3rd floor, he spotted the old man sitting next to the coffee vending machine. The old man was deaf and visibly poor. Sir looked at the shirt in his hand and thought he could do without it. He walked up to the old man, who by now had stood up adjusting his clothes and hair. He gave the shirt to the old man and the old man beamed a wide smile. The shirt might be a little loose for the old man, but what the heck atleast it was a new shirt.

Happy with his good deed for the day, he walked off to the car park. The old man was happy with this great gesture and act of benevolence. He decided to wear this shirt the next day and show it to that Sir who had been so charitable towards him.

Next day, the old man wore the shirt with pride and sat next to the coffee vending machine. His revered Sir walked up the stairs, spotted him and gave him a smile. Being happy that the old man had worn his work of charity, he walked to his cubicle and switched on his PC. He found that out of the ten shirts, only nine were remaining. One was stolen. In a fit of disgust, he called up his security head and informed him about this. The security head walked up towards his floor and spotted the old man wearing the shirt. The security head knew he had found his man. He took the old man to Sir.
Sir knew that if anyone came to know he had given his shirt to the old man, it would tarnish his reputation and it would be seen as though he didn’t value the company’s gift.
He hesitated to acknowledge that the shirt was given by him to the old man. Sir had to secure his own reputation after all. Sir needed this job and the fat salary. The old man, he was quite sure, was used to poverty.

Sir just looked at his PC and pretended to read e-mails and dismissed the security head and the old man.
The security head, after all, was a man with a soft heart. He didn’t want to be harsh on the old man and hence, without making any scene, asked the old man to leave.

The old man never understood why he was forced out of his job. He blamed it on fate. But he was extremely grateful to have come across someone like Sir who had gifted him this nice blue shirt. God, for him, was indeed great.

Sir, on the other hand, never could drink coffee for the rest of his life. Sir never wore a blue shirt either.

Listening to Raga Keeravani on my headphones, I wait for enlightenment to strike me to come up with my best blog post ever.

Sorry, it didn’t happen.

In other worlds, shit continues to happen. Probably I am becoming immune to such stories. Or probably I prefer to look the other way with a “What can I possibly do if the powers don’t do anything?” face. Or probably my coffee is getting cold.

I watched Zinda over the weekend. Nice movie, must watch for some skin-show and loads of gory violence. Absolute bliss. Loved its soundtrack too.

The contrast that struck me the moment I was in the cinema hall was between the morning and the evening of that particular Saturday. A morning spent with kids at the zoo, many of them excited at the prospect of being taken in a bus for a picnic. The happiness that was etched all over their faces. I was happy too. But when the turn came to drop them off at the place where most kids stayed, reality came gushing into my minds. The kids, after hours of fun and laughter, had to return to their homes – those homes which the privileged call ‘slums’. I didn’t need to be sad. I was sure the kids didn’t complain about anything. A home is a home after all, right? I hope so.

The evening was in a plush theatre, sound-proofed et al. People munching on Rs. 40 popcorn and sipping on over-priced glasses of sugared water. The contrasting fortunes of people kept flashing in my mind. With a little difficulty, I managed to drive all those negative thoughts away. My job here was to have fun. To behave up-market. And so I did.
I was happy then too.

My mobile beeps – Asks me to subscribe to Cricket news and live commentary.