Leonarda dei chekku's works opened to the public

One of the most recognized figures in 2oth century, he is best known as Leonarda dei chekku..This artist wishes to display some of his work for public appreciation.These works are already auctioned at the Sotheby's.

The Diana portrait was drawn out of the artist's fetish for the princess..The artist has rejected a cool six million pound offer from Maharajah Charles..

The artist in his younger days thought shah rukh khan was cool.and sketched this one.

This artist admired netaji and drew it to express his admiration for the great fighter.

CHILDHOOD remembrances

Before I gained some level of logic in the haywire brain of mine...I believed in a few things, a few ideas....a few beliefs.....a few concepts which evoke laughter, shame and absurdity when I recall them now....


Whacky event 1:

I was always fascinated by what happened in the church. The pomp and splendor was a must watch when I was a kid... and was quite bewildered by the attention the mass paid at the “mass”......But the real curiosity lied in what the holy communion was all about. Used to nag mom about how the communion did “taste”...Funny part is that I was bemused about its taste rather than why people took it.....Got enough scolding from the elder’s in family for this sacrilegious curiosity...And then one day at St Mary’s church in Trivandrum while taking part in the mass, in the hustle and bustle, I got inadvertently placed in the queue and was standing stark in front of the priest who was giving the communion. Rather than get out of the queue I showed the audacity of fulfilling this ambition of childhood...The kid in me was pretty disappointed that it was no big deal taking the communion. “Honest” to the core this incident was explained to my parents and rest of the story aint pretty.......


Whacky idea 1:

My parents always wanted me to be a whiz-kid @school....And under influence of some magazines or lectures they believed the idiot box will affect my academic pyrotechnics...
Bro and I had this fetish for the telly and we used to be severely reprimanded for excessive watching. Each time parents used to go out we used to be glued to the box...The television used to be switched of nano seconds prior to the time they reached home... (The scooter my parents used to give sonic booms when they approached home).But my dad found an ingenious way of checking whether we were watching television by placing is hand on top of the set..... And the temperature sensors in his skin responded relatively (temperature proportional to the hours of viewing)...This played spoil sport in our scheme of things and we used to get caught red handed because of dad’s “Telesensor formula”.....But myself and bro were not to be defeated easily...Cognition proved that a mug of ice placed on the top of the box resulted in a drastic drop in temperature of the set. The art was perfect over a period of time and just seconds after the “sonic boom” of dad’s scooter echoes through... we conceal all the evidence (read ice mug, cloth to dry any moisture.) and we sit back with our books in the study room...And my parents are “satisfied” at how their kids have changed for good.....Since we were not familiar with six sigma rules and since we never expected any mishap in the operations, we were caught off guard when our T.V blowed out due to excessive amount of water creeping inside the set. After intense questioning from parents akin to CIA or RAW (I have slightly exaggerated here) my bro gave away first and then me and our brilliant plan was busted......



Whacky impressions (there are many):

Sidney Sheldon was “female” until quite recently....But am happy that there many others having the same delusion (DJ).....Nowadays am careful with names...
West Indies was always some part of India and couldn’t figure out whey they played as separate team even though they were part of the motherland......
Getting into IAS was easy...u just have to read the manorama year book.....
Once on a trip to blore along with parents, someone stole cash from dad while traveling in a bus. Looking at the grievous face of my parents I was perplexed and really wondered whether we would be in the streets since dad had lost all dough he had........I was under the impression that all dough one had would be in his/her pocket......And I cried a lot imagining the life ahead in the streets ....

These are incidents which gives me a lot of fond memories while recollecting. Guess each one of us have such small incidents, beliefs, ideas....Naive but worth giving a smile.....

SChinDLeR's LiSt

I always thought that I could watch through any movie without empathizing with the characters...without an iota of sympathy for the victims portrayed.....I always thought I wasn’t dumb enough to cry watching a movie......I always thought crying is for the weak hearted.......but these notions were shattered when I watched Schindler’s List......

Very few movies have perturbed my conscience...my existence....But this one really got into my head.....I got the DVD through a friend of mine. And started watching it alone at home........The movie is shot in black and white...Initally it dampened my spirits to watch the movie in B&W...But towards the end I realized why the directly shot it in B&W...The movie is too gory to be portrayed in color and the shades of B&W gave justice to the era in which the movie is shot.......Previous Steven Spielberg movies which I had watched were primarily big budget flicks with freakish themes....And I expected this one to be just another movie with lot of guns...bullets...canisters......

The sheer disregard for ethics and morals is depicted explicitly in this magnum opus. I couldn’t help wonder how people could become such sadist and savage as portrayed about the SS who ran the Nazi concentration camps....Ralph Fiennes depicts the role of Amon Göth quite realistically...Infact he was able to generate so much hatred in my mind against the Nazis that I inadvertently began to admire his histrionic skills.....The detailing of the camps are graphic and it doesn’t try to mince the images.

Jews in the camp were killed to fulfill a propaganda that they were a lesser race...They were made to work like dogs in the camps and the older ones were periodically exterminated...Amon Goth is depicted killing people like he was just practicing shooting...People are killed in Gas chambers due to shortage of bullets.........The ghettos are crowded with people with hardly a crumble of bread to it......I found it hard to digest the human race can deteriorate to any extent in pursuit of power and greed.....

Oskar Schindler (played spectacularly by Liam Neeson) helps few Jews from the Gestapo’s brutal homicides......He invests his fortunes in buying out Jews from the concentration camps to employ in his factory... The penultimate scene in which Schindler breaks down when he realises that he could have saved a few more Jews by selling his car is heart rendering...

I just could help myself cry watching this movie which made me feel guilty for something which I hadn’t done.....Is it because I felt sorry for the Jews in the concentration camp...Is it because of Schindler’s helplessness...Is it because I have never done good enough as a Human being....Is it because.....

I ve never found the answer........




Trivia on the movie from Wiki

Ralph Fiennes' performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. While he didn't win the Oscar, he did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award, which is the British equivalent to the Oscar.

Originally, Roman Polanski was asked to direct the film. However, he passed on it, having survived the Polish Ghettos himself. He felt it would be too personal, and would bring up too many hard memories that he was not prepared to deal with at the time. He went on to direct another Holocaust-themed movie, The Pianist in 2002. This earned him an Oscar.
Director Steven Spielberg refused payment for making this movie, saying that it would be like "taking blood money."

SHANTARAM

I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun-towers, I became my country’s most wanted man.
Luck ran with me and flew with me across the world to India, where I set up and ran a free clinic in a crowded Bombay slum. I joined the Bombay mafia, and worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler, and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed, and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And when those wilderness years of hunted exile came to an end, when I changed my life, when I stopped running onto the knives and started running into the light of love instead, I wrote the novel, Shantaram, that was based on my wild and wicked life."
–Gregory David Roberts, author of Shantaram


The book is a gem in every sense.It might not be a literary masterpiece.But it stands out for sheer portrayal of emotions and relations..Just like the reviews say its hard to come out of the book unscathed.The story itself is very unique and the detailing the author gives is so good that you happen to visualise everything through his eyes.Gregory David Roberts as "Linbaba" rocks!!!

Another day in CET!!!

Memories are sometimes cherishing…Sometimes depressing....and sometimes placid...But they are episodes in an individual that haunts once in a while...CET is the place that has given me a pot pourri of all sorts of memoirs…A place where amorous casanovas share space with scholarly bookworms and braveheart brawlers….An altar of intellectuals where the scholars carry anything from Thermodynamics texts, Election manifestos, Mills and boon’s to soft porn novels…..A steaming brouhaha of political affiliations swearing by all color in the vibgyor..It’s the place to be……..

I had my share of fun at this temple of engineers...The day usual begins at nine thirty in the morning when along with a friend of mine we begin our race to reach college in a vintage Bajaj chetak ,which struggles hard to help reach these poor soul in time..In fact our classes must have already begun in full swing at nine in the morning...The eager students in us wouldn’t like to miss any thing(read attendance) and we reach class ten minutes before the next hour..Creating excuses is an art mastered by every cetian and it aint any difficult for us either... The precious first hour attendance gives us the luxury of skipping the next hour and the attention shift to the tea stall located outside the campus...The Sallap tea stall is where the blue blooded political big shots contemplate forthcoming strategies, where sapped up kids come for a smoke and a fake Nescafe coffee or guys who have an allergy for anything related to education discuss anything under the sun. The place is bustling with guys who read the morning papers or watched T.V and armed with the new found info debates occur sans any decorum that can put our parliament to shame...The second hour is generally spend eaves dropping and at times engaged in the chatter that is an omni present feature of the tea stall…...Other times when the number of people skipping classes rise enormously ,the whole junta occupies the pristine acacia woodland inside the campus or nearby mexx corner(close to the ladies hostel) and then its mass bullying of some hapless soul who had the audacity to walk through our line of sight. Although it’s quite sadist mentality to harass anyone for no reason, its usually restricted to harmless small talk...Most of the time victims feel quite gallant inside for being the center of attraction among the faceless hooligans. Being outside the classroom can get boring at times and getting back inside classroom for the last hour before lunch doesn’t need much of cajoling...Guys find it hard to concentrate at the gibberish coming from the lecturer’s mouth and resort to sketching anything on their only notebook or vent out artistic creation on the desks and others find no better reason to take a short nap..


Afternoon the college is in full swing...The canteen is packed up.Nowehere else you can have a sumptuous meal for eight bucks....Guys ask for more chapattis than they paid for and it not uncommon to see someone stealing one or two. There is plenty of time for the next hour and the gang moves over to sallap tea stall to take stock of whatever happened through the day. Another pack of cigarettes another round of coffee... Some move over to nearby lodges to spend the rest of the day. “Brothers” lodge accommodate many of our classmates and the rooms are stocked with playing cards, cigarettes, booze, pirated movies and many find this potent combination too hard to resist.The card games are played with fervour...Passions rise high at times...There is always a bee of onlookers who give “expert” opinions to the players...Someone in the room plays the latest music or any item number video. Another chap might be having a good sleep to compensate for the heavy hangover he had after having “Contessa rum” (cheapest one in town)...Once the game starts the clock freezes...Time is never an issue and it goes on until all are tired. Few who are disinterested just go back to classes .They are volunteers who will provide the much vaunted “proxy attendance” for the rest of the gang. The proxy experts had perfected the art over the semester and they do it with military precision leaving nothing for the lecturer to doubt. Rarely, when the number become disproportionate the game plan goes awry. Still these proxy callers are a highly respected elite gang.

Traditionally at least one hour is off in a day .Either the lecturer had to pay his electricity bills and gone out or some relative of his who had come home at the wrong time or he might have had some important “logistics” issues to deal with. During this time, the intellectuals visit the library to expand there know-how on engineering concepts. The Romeos use the golden opportunity for another round of “sugar beating”...And the proxy volunteers return to the lodges to inform the others about the glad news. But the card players nonchalantly continued what they did...Its 4 and time to return to the college...

Its time when the ladies return to their hostels. When the day scholars catch their bus. It’s time when the crowd is out...Some people who had gone for the matinee reach and began blabbering about the movie. Few are interested in hearing the story and their eyes are fixed to catch glimpse of any damsel moving through the hustle and bustle. The casanovas just prance among the crowd. The tough guys “oversee” all that’s happening and looks out for trouble from rivals.

Soon it’s quite. All the college buses have left and others leave to the confinement of their hostel rooms.......Few Romeos and Juliet’s continue roaming the woods in front of the college...And then a few like us still sit in front of “Sallap” looking forward to another day. Another day to bum around...Another day with all the time in the world.......

TRAVALOGUE

The journey began in the wee hours on one fine Sunday morning. Never did I have a inkling about how exhilarating the trip would be. Getting up at 4 in the morning was itself an achievement since laziness can be benchmarked on my sprightliness…And that I had gather all my will power to rise before the sun did…….

Our trip began comfortably, Infact luxuriously as we had a Ford at our disposal for the three hour trip from Mysore to waynad...Snugly I occupied the back seat and began enjoying the soothing Rafi melodies... The day before we had a project party which ran late into night and that had taken its toll on me…..Little wonder the fatigue and Rafi did get me napping soon...The car zipped past Gundlpet in good time and I woke up when someone in the car changed the music to some Iron maiden screams…The forty winks did get me rejuvenated for the rest of the journey..

As we closed Waynad the landscape changed slowly...The paddy field got replaced by stocky shrubs, tall teaks and bristled bamboos…….The road began getting curvier and bumpier….Instead of tea stalls we began seeing more of sign boards mentioning presence of wild animals…It got more dense as we entered the sanctuary area. The bamboos hanged at steep angles from both sides of the road making a magnificent dome just like what we see in a church altar...Looking above, Instead of the sky we saw leaves and birds…Soon we reached our first destination “Muthanga wild life sanctuary”…..

Meeting wild animal up close without any barriers can get your adrenalin pumping. Never dawned on us that it was no ordinary joy ride until we began our Jeep safari inside the park...Even the most macho looking tough guy can get intimidated by presence of wild animals...Initial glimpses of Wild monkeys and flocks of deer’s were greeted by our fake sense of bravado..Travelling deeper into forest we came across herds of elephants. Being keralities we always thought ourselves to be comfortable with elephants. The driver stopped the jeep and positioned us something like 50 metres away from the herd. Out of the blue the elephants began to blow their trumpets and started advancing. Panic struck we got into the Jeep and the engines roared in time to get us to a safe distance. Our battle hardened driver was bemused at our antics. Our faces told the truth in spite of trying to act macho. Further we encountered less threatening Sambhar deers...peacocks...wild fowls...giant squirrels. The guide mentioned about presence of leopards in the sanctuary, but we couldn’t get any glimpses of those magnificent cats...Maybe we might have had our hearts in our mouth if we saw… Towards the end of our Jungle Safari we found bison’s...Actually they looked more threatening than the elephants. Thankfully our senses dint favour any more close encounters…..The silence of the forest was a welcome relief for us…Ears accustomed to vehicle noise and Eminem relished the uneasy calmness inside the wild……..The guide gave us the parting message ..Respect wild animals ...They are not as bad as u think……..

Zapped up we had a heavy breakfast at a thattukada (mallu dhaba)…We bought fruits (unlike the pesticide rich found in towns) to comfort our ever hungry tummies from a near by shop…We reached the next destination “Edakkal caves” in time. I had never been to a cave before and was pretty excited to have a look. The cave was really huge beyond fancy...Edakkal means “stone in between”. The cave actually got shape due to some earthquake that happened in some pre-Neolithic age…The huge rock that hang precariously made us feel like grounded flour. It even had inscriptions made by tribes of some forgone era. Carving that seemed like those that we saw in text books while learning harrapan civilization right in front of our eyes...Behind the caves was a huge rock (actually a hill) something like 4000 ft above sea level. We were in good spirits and decided to climb it. The initial part was quite easy and we did the climb at a brisk pace throwing boastful glances at lesser mortals who were moving quite slow. The angles changed from 45 to 60 sometime later. And my 70 kilo frame suddenly found the going tough…half way through I was gasping for breath like a dog…..The breaks to catch oxygen became more frequent. The only bottle of water we had taken was empty now. Like a warrior trying to conquer the final frontier we climbed the last few feet’s with every iota of energy we had…..Each step...Each breath...was a struggle…Finally at the destination it felt like being Edmund Hillary …29,035 feet is what he climbed though..

Resting on top of the “world” was a biggest achievement I did after a long time...

The last leg of the trip took us to Meenmutty waterfalls to cool over frayed nerves...All expectations that this one should have been easy was cut short when the guide informed that it involves a 4 km trek through a treacherous trail. Unlike Edakkal rock climb it involved a steep descent which leads to the hole. The tropical climate ensured that we sweat liberally and that added to the discomfort...The huge trees and serpentine bushes kept the sun at bay and it was difficult to guess what time of the day it was. An hour later we reached the falls...Awstruck by the hugeness and ferocious power of the falls we abandoned plans of taking a bath. None of us fancied getting washed down the torrent of water…Resting on the rocks nearby we sat admiring this bounty of nature...Running short on time we began our arduous climb back...On the way back we got rejuvenated after taking a bath in a nearby stream. The base camp was a two hour trek and we had buttermilk to get us standing on two legs...Neverthless it was worth the pain...

It was a long and exciting day. We had to reach Mysore by night. Curtailing further plans we started our homebound journey…Monday blues began setting in ...Quite early…
Sitting in the same seat when I came...Exhausted …..Worn out……But with a sense of euphoria I gradually fell asleep feeling elated……

AD-VANTAGE

Browsing the idiot box I inadvertently began watching ad’s which I always used to skip. Gone are the days when ad’s used to be fillers in between broadcasts. It seems other way around. Seems like they allot time slots for ad’s first and then fill the remaining time with some broadcast...

I do wonder whether ad’s does really affect our life heedless or otherwise. Does the Junta really use a Lux soap just bcoz it’s the secret of Juhi Chawla‘s beauty…How many buy a TVS Victor just bcoz Sachin “loves” riding it. Wonder whether he goes for nets in it. And those Ad makers say celebrities add to the visibility of the product. But am bewildered whether the products are being emphasized or are the celebs get all the attention. Another means to earn dough for these cash surplus heroes. I always love to see ad’s that delves on the USP of the product along with providing sort of entertainment...

But there are Ad’s where celebrities do matter. like the Nike ad…The cognitive factor being the customers are usually sports freaks who are largely influenced by the footwear worn by their fav footballer or tennis player……The difference between usual run of the mill celeb ads being ,there is a convergence of the product and the profession of the promoter…

Would love to recollect some of my fav ad’s...The Dhara ad with the jalebi kid is still fresh. I remember watching it from the days of Surabhi (doordarshan) something like 10 years back…Simple .beautiful…and that’s still invigorating...Another pick would be the Amul ad. It’s so rustic...The music that interlaces the visuals blends harmoniously. Guess that ad played a big part in its finding a foothold in the market where giants like Nestle threatened to engulf it…

Advertisements look so easy to make but expressing an idea within a span of few minutes that too without provoking the sensibility of the viewers is a big task. There is no room for error in an ad. It can either kill a product or help make big dough….

Quite recently few ad’s made really bad impressions…The Servo ad wherein a Cop chase is cut short after finding an urgent requirement for some blood group is so silly…Never got an inkling about what they meant by the ad. Quite similarly the ad doing rounds are some guthka or pan I guess company. This guthka chewing CEO is the owner some vast business empire. The message it splashes is to eat their brand of gutka and u happen to be in the chair of some huge business conglomerate. And they think all mortal gonna believe their stunning AD………or they must be some transcendental concepts hard to digest for ordinary people……….

Tata indica ad stood out for its humour...Viewers still enjoy watching the guy getting slapped…But the bottom line is that it also led the viewers to believe in what he(the guy) advocated about the car. Those ad makers really pulled of a fabulous marketing trick through the ad…Similarly the air deccan ad was down to earth although the sector was a high profile one...And they did a good job convincing ordinary mortals to travel by air..


Watching ad’s can be excruciating pain for the eyes or it can be soothing fillers for some high voltage drama aired primetime. But they will always be there as long as televisions...Satellites...and viewers exist…whether we like it or not...
Seems like am watching too many ads. And missed out the actual sitcom...