Sagely advice

How smart – or oversmart – kids are these days!
Two little boys, both in pre-primary, were playing cricket with a plastic ball in my building’s compound.
As I waited for the lift, I overheard one of them telling the other, “Arey overarm bowling kar. Teri izzat badh jayegi!”

Eavesdropping: What Raj and Randhir Kapoor have in common

One young man to another: “What is behind this fascination of the Kapoors for beautiful women called Nargis? First it was Raj Kapoor. And now his grandson’s latest flame is also called Nargis.”

Learning from mistakes

Last Saturday evening I shot a flower-tree-vegetable-garden exhibition show at the Gaondevi Maidan, Thane.
The photos have been uploaded here.
But this post is not about what I shot but rather about what I missed shooting, all due to my own stupidity.
Halfway through the shooting I realised that I had run out of storage space on my card. So I had to waste time in deleting old photos from the camera. Hence,
RULE NO 1: Approach any new assignment with a blank card.
A little later, I discovered to my horror that my battery level was dipping fast. Therefore,
RULE NO 2: Charge your battery to max before setting forth from home.
As a result of these two bloomers, I ended up wasting time and found myself getting irritated. The usual excitement I feel during any new shoot was missing.
But one learns from mistakes.
As soon as I had reached home and transferred my latest pictures to my comp’s external hard drive, I promptly did two things:
1) Formatted my card.
2) Charged up the camera battery.

Eavesdropping: Why there is no hope for Dilli

I was standing in a long autorickshaw queue. Behind me were two young out-of-towners.
The queue was moving slowly. Frustrated, one of them suddenly blurted out: “Here in Bombay you have to stand in queues for everything – ATM, train and bus tickets, even autorickshaws… Our Dilli is much better!”

Eavesdropping: Why Arjun Singh Really Died

Newspaper headlines:
4 February 2011: Arunoday Singh, grandson of Arjun Singh, makes Bollywood debut with Yeh Saali Zindagi
4 March 2011: Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh CM Arjun Singh passes away

“Arjun Singh saw his grandson kissing more than 20 times in Yeh Saali Zindagi, had a heart attack and promptly died!”
– One college girl to another at a suburban railway station.

Mile sur mera tumhara…

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi passed away on 23 January 2011 and it might seem a bit late to write about him. But hoardings paying tribute to him still catch your attention all over the city. So it is really not out of place to write a few more words about him.
I am no great expert on Indian classical music but I can definitely say that Bhimsen Joshi’s Mile sur mera tumhara did more for national integration than all the Republic Day parades and speeches since Independence and Manoj Kumar movies combined together.