Can you smell the freshly cut paddy? Do you see colourful kites in the sky and colourful rangolis in front of homes? Have you come across bonfires in courtyards at the break of dawn?
If yes, then the spring season is upon us. Which for all the Telugus across the world means it’s Sankranthi time…
Here’s wishing all ye folks a Happy Bhogi, Cheerful Sankranthi and a fun filled Pongal.
Difficult to believe, but looks like Hyderabad is colder than Bangalore this time of the year! The nightly lows are too cold for comfort for some. Not for me though, I’m loving it 
I’ve always been a law-abiding and righteous citizen, with the occasional walk-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road and an lone traffic accident as the only blemishes against my name. But the past week, was nearly hauled off to the gaol as a potential airplane attacker!
For a family emergency, I opted to fly SpiceJet to Visakhapatnam and since it was an impromptu journey, packed whatever little I could muster into a rarely-used haversack and scooted off to the RGIA, Shamshabad (will write about my first visit to the world-class airport some other day). At the security check, I dropped off my bag and other sundry belongings on to the trolley and after being frisked, was awaiting at the other end waiting to collect the bag…which never arrived!
Two security personnel came along and holding my bag aloft, asked aloud whose bag it was. I admitted it was mine and to my utter surprise, was called aside and in a melodramatic style, was asked to explain why I was carrying a knife & scissors in my baggage! I was flabbergasted since I definitely did not pack any cutlery or stationery into my bag and vehemently denied that I had done so. They said the scanner had showed a small-ish pocket knife & scissors in the bag…something that was part of a SwissCard. Something clicked at the back of my mind…me getting one such SwissCard for free with some cosmetics but couldn’t fathom why it had found its way into this bag. I ransacked the er…haversack and lo! there nestled in one of the side pocket was the offending SwissCard, a small pen-knife and mini-scissors innit!
So it happened that I was at Ming’s Court earlier today…you know, the speciality Chinese cuisine restaurant from the Ohri’s group, and once we finished our meal, they passed around few fortune cookies. Now I don’t believe in these fortune cookies/astrologers/palmists/parrot/tarot stuff but at my friend’s insistence, took up two of them (different coloured ones) and just out of curiosity, read them aloud:
“Your ingenuity and imagination will get results”
Ahem…I’m not one to blow my own trumpet but that actually sounded true and was feeling quite smug about it…until the 2nd one was read aloud:
“An unexpected relationship will become permanent”
Whoosh! Bang! Crash! There came down the hope that these cookies were kinda good natured, if not really prophetic! Why otherwise would they contain such scary stuff? Any of you readers believe in this stuff and if yes, have they really been truthful? Do lemme know…
P.S: We were back to believing they were partly truthful when my friend read aloud his: “You are more likely to give in!” 
The biggest strength of the movie Wanted is Salman Khan. And the biggest weakness…well, is Mahesh Babu! His portrayal of the poker-faced fearless and arrogant goon-cum-undercover cop in Pokiri comes in the way of Salman asserting his authority all over the movie. Not that Salman himself can’t be poker-faced and arrogant, he usually excels in those type of characters and is no different in Wanted. Its at the lighter moments that he doesn’t even come close to Mahesh’s superb comic timing in the original. I mean, a simple upma-comment would evoke chuckles in the Telugu version but a similar comment on pasta in the Hindi one hardly makes one grin!
Apart from the comedy, Salman Khan puts in a bravura performance and carries the movie throughout. He’s never one for expressions but the arrogance and brooding machismo of the role fit him perfectly. Ayesha Takia’s portrayal is commendable and she does quite well at the emotional scenes as well as the confrontation scenes. Mahesh Manjrekar is good…he’s very hateable as the lecherous cop who makes everyone’s boot-tip itch. Prakash Raj reprises his role as the villain and I didn’t know he could speak hindi so fluently. Assemm Merchant (he from the bin tere sanam music video) plays his right hand man and could’ve been given more scope. Ditto for Vinod Khanna, who plays Salman’s father. He’s too big an actor to be relegated to bit parts such as this. Inder Kumar tags along with Salman as his friend, a cruel departure for a guy who played the friend/foe in Tumko Na Bhool Paayenge so well. Mahek Chhal plays the vamp, averagely.
29th August: Its 1 AM in the night and I have been rudely awoken from my sleep by loud sounds of drum beats, clanging cymbals, rattling trinkets, hooting sounds and the works. Groggily I stumbled to the window and glanced out, wondering what the hell was the cacophony all about. Well, it was a Ganesh immersion procession on its way to the tank bund. Muttering curses under my breath, I staggered back to the bed and rolled about for a good half-an-hour before I could get back to sleep.
30th August: Its 1 AM in the night and I’m half-asleep, just dozing off when I’m shaken out of it by the same drum beats, cymbals et al. Another ganesh immersion procession noisily making its way towards the lake. I doubled my curses and mutterings and drifted off to sleep after counting maybe like a million sheep!
31st August: Its 1:30 AM and I am wide awake! Two ganesh processions have already announced their noisy passage and I can faintly hear a third one approaching. I find myself lying in wait of these noisy &$%^#*$^#$)#^$@!’s and listening intently for similar sounds and only when I’m convinced that they’re gone for good will I get to sleep!
You must’ve understood my rants by now. Why on earth does an immersion procession has to be accompanied by such hellish din and cacophony? Can’t a simple nimarjan be affected amidst few holy hymns and probably the utterings of ganpati bappa moriya, agle baras tu jaldi aa? Does all this noise have a point? What are these morons trying to say to the world? That they’ve achieved some fantastically rarefied feat? or that they’re the next-best-death-metal-band-on-the-planet? Heck, even the loudest of loud gigs has a rhythm and music innit (er, sometimes!) but all this is just pure unadulterated noise.
The Longest ever (in terms of duration, and in this Century) Total Solar Eclipse is occurring over our skies…tomorrow! It would last about 6 and a half minutes and the shadow of the Moon would start from the western ghats of India and will stretch all the way into Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.
On Wednesday, 2009 July 22, a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses half of Earth. The path of the Moon’s umbral shadow begins in India and crosses through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. After leaving mainland Asia, the path crosses Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality reaches 6 min 39 s. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, which includes most of eastern Asia, Indonesia, and the Pacific Ocean. [Full and detailed information available at NASA's GSFC ]
The Eclipse will start at 5.28 am IST as the Moon’s shadow will touch the Earth at somewhere out in the Arabian Sea. The shadow will then move in an South-Eastern direction towards China and will reach the Pacific Ocean and then will finally lift off the Earth at around 10:00 IST. I think it is too early in the morning! In fact, in some places, sunrise itself will be in an eclipsed manner! That would be cool to watch, ain’t it?
Totality will be visible from the Indian cities of Surat, Baroda, Bhopal, Varanasi, Patna, & Guwahati, with Taregana in Bihar said to be the best place to view the event! Well, Hyderbad will get to see a partial eclipse but it’s way early in the morning and given the cloudy skies that we’ve been experiencing lately, I doubt whether we’ll be able to see it in all its glory. Better catch up the news bulletins afterwards. And please, do ignore the cock n’ bull rumour-mongering stories about Earthquakes and Tsunamis that dumbass channels like India TV/Zee News/Aaj Tak etc will air! And stay clear of the astrological gibberish that is sure to be bandied about!
And if you’re planning to watch n’ tweet, do use the #tse22 hashtag and let the tworld know of it!
[Edit: Updated the time frame of the eclipse in IST.]
