Bad Sad Mad Fad

I stay away from commenting about fashion trends. But what I saw deserves a mention. I am unable to stop lamenting about the preposterous ideas people get.

Maruti Swift is one car that’s close to my heart. Why? Not really because I consider it worth every penny. And neither does its looks manage to mop off other cars in the market. It’s just that this is one decent car that has taken birth at a time I started eyeing the car market.

Since this bloody car is close to my heart, I keep noticing every damn Swift on the road. Today I encountered one such Swift. I was petrified to see bullet holes on its body. Quite a lot of them, in a random fashion. These holes are like the holes that the “Liquid Metal” man in Terminator II gets when he is shot at.

I took a closer look and then things started to get apparent. These are not holes. These are just some sort of crazy accessories that you stick to the body of the car.

Maybe if I get to like this kind of fashion and I have a lot of money, I will go to a plastic surgeon and get a hole surgically made on my forehead. I’ll be the man who got shot in the head and lived to tell the tale.

But as of now, even an act of ear or nose piercing will be attributed to manifestation of madness. So, the sight of this car with artificial bullet-wounds hurt my feelings.

My English

This thing has been bugging me for some time now. For some unknown reason, the quality of my English dropped considerably. Not sure if that's because of reading too much of machine-translated englished in Japanese bugs. Whatever the reason may be, my english is in an appalling state.

I was trying to ignore such thoughts for quite some time. But whenever I get a chance to re-read whatever I wrote, I feel a pang of pain in my heart when I realize that king-size blunders are common-place in my English now.

A few years ago, I was extremely proud of my English. I used to sneer at every bad usage. My friend knows about it pretty well and this would always be the favourite topic in our endless conversations. But that was the time when I felt that a better English was the first thing that will convert a person from a "qualifier" to a "winner". Now, I know a lot of other parameters that can distort the selection criteria.

Can anyone here help me get back my English? Atleast help me get back my penchant for better English?

Shankar Mahadevan

This happens to be a very old story. During the first week of October, there was a week of celebration in Hyderabad for the 50th year of AP formation. As part of this, Shankar Mahadevan had come down to Hyderabad to enthrall a packed audience at the Taramati Baradari open-air theatre.

This was a shot I took. Probably one of the best out of about 40-50 shots that my camera captured that day.

It doesn't matter how many shots I've tried. For people of poor knowledge of photography, I got to explain that this shot is not that easy. If you think it's easy, the only remark I pass is "go try buddy!".

Leaving the camera aside, another point I wanted to make is about Shankar Mahadevan himself. His voice is extremely melodious, and his command over music is exemplary. I don't consider myself capable of "reviewing" his performance.