Kamikaze firefly

I thought moths were not very bright till I saw the Kamikaze firefly. It was a rivetting sight, the firefly glided into my darkened apartment, like an aircraft on a sortie in hostile skies. It fluttered and twinkled in abandon before Lucifer whispered in its ears. Without warning, it dived straight into the waiting warmth of a solitary candle. Burning firefly in molten wax. Stupid insect.

Wintry sundries

I like the winter. The air is crisper, the days are shorter, sleep is sweeter and most of humanity is hidden under layers of clothing which is a delightful thing.

Smile Obama weep Obama

Obama has been smiling a lot on television. I just don't get it. Americans are getting fatter and their wallets thinner, the globe is a hot plate, there is nothing left in Iraq or Afghanistan to bomb and he can't even bring back jobs from India because they have all been fired. That's a messy world you have inherited my friend. He can't even be stupid, Dubya has exhausted the world's stupidity. Tough eh?

Probably me

I surely am the strangest person I have ever met.

To the camera born

If anyone was born to act, it's Matthew Carter. In case you have been hiding under a rock with sunglasses on, Carter is Juno's ultrasound baby. Always watch the credit roll of a movie: Old jungle saying.

A tale of two movies

The Visitor is an exceptional film. A film without big moments, theatrics or even great surprises, but it takes you to a very warm place. Can't tell you much without giving it all away but it's about a near-depressive professor with a very unremarkable existence who redisovers a lost rhythm through the eyes of two unwanted guests ... a Syrian drummer and his Senegalese girlfriend. Rent it, steal it, pirate it ... own it.
And then I put myself through Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion. The film has more cliches than a cricket commentator's vocab and more potholes in the plot than a Bangalore road. Bhandarkar is obviously much more at home in Chandni Bar than in the trippy underbelly of high fashion. It shows.

Ashes to gold dust

I once found myself sitting across a table from Rajesh Khanna in an airline lounge in Mumbai. The old man in the black kurta looked defeated by age, harsh lights and whiskey. I couldn't help but gawk. Here was a man, who according to my mom and aunts, had an entire generation of women eating out of his hands. He didn't look like much of a lady killer to me, he looked half dead. I could never bear to tell the women in my family that their hero aged and rotted like the rest of us.
There is something about the lives of role models whose lives run parallel to yours. Their fragility reminds you of the transience of everything ... fame, beauty, youth, life. As I watched Anil Kumble doff his cap to the TV cameras in farewell, it brought back a flood of memories, not just Kumble's life but my own. I can't remember watching cricket without Kumble playing. He has been there forever, like me. And now he's gone. One day Sachin will go too. Ashes to gold dust.