Thursday, April 30, 2009

Favourite Comic Book Quotes

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Just some quotes I can remember off the top of my head.


The Devil made me do it.
Lucifer: I have never made one of them do anything. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them.
- Sandman #23


Phantom Stranger: Can you travel into the future, John Constantine?
John Constantine: Only like everyone else boss. You know. One minute at a time.
- The Books of Magic #3


The Joker: If I am going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice. HA HA HA!!...
- Batman: The Killing Joke


Calvin: The Horrendous Space Kablooie!
- Calvin & Hobbes


Ogami Itto: Tsuwabuki some call it. The only flower to bloom in winter snows. The world all around it is in winter, frigid and cold. But yet it flowers with all its might, this Tsuwa-no-hana. (Note: The analogy is to a prostitute)
-Lone Wolf and Cub: Chapter 14 (Winter Flower)


Fone Bone: Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures!
- Bone


Batman: I keep this city safe, even if it is safer by just one person. And I do not ever give in or give up.
- Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader: Part 2
(Detective Comics #853)


Dandele: There is no goodbye, Chunky Rice.
- Goodbye, Chunky Rice


Friday, April 24, 2009

The Beautiful Game

Football season is here in NLS again and I've spent the last few days playing and building up stamina for the tournament. It's been lovely to feel the touch of a football on my feet again and horrific to find out that I have lost said touch. The recent rain is only helping matters; softens the ground and brings back nostalgic school days of playing football in the mud, there is really no better weather to play the game than a stormy wind and rain.

I would love to write pages on Barca's performances this season, but until it is over I don't want to say anything and jinx my team. Still, regardless of how many trophies we get or don't get, I have never been more proud of supporting this club in ten years of being a cule. I got interested in the club after playing FIFA '98; shallow reason to start following a club, I know, but one decision which has worked out well, methinks.

Related: We are apparently going for an ambitious 4-3-2-1 Barca style formation in the tournament. I like it. For the record, I'll probably be playing in right central midfield.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Where There is a Will...

The last fiery rays were clinging to the sky, sending bright red streaks across the horizon in a vain attempt to hang on. The waves crashed against the shore with escalating ferocity as the tide increased by the minute. Each time the beach broke a wave another smashed into it. Slowly the water began creeping upward, inch by inch.

He sat on a rock, legs dangling, and watched all of this. His life had been miserable for a long time, today it had reached its climax. His boss had called him and handed him the pink slip, saying that the orders from above were to 'downsize' the company branch and they had unfortunately named him among the people to be fired. He said nothing and impassively walked away. He knew that no one else had been fired and that he had been chucked out so that the boss's son could join the company. He went straight to the shore, probably entertaining thoughts of drowning and ending his existence there and then.

Now he watched the ocean slowly winning its battle of ground supremacy. A crab scuttled away to higher ground to avoid the sea but was caught in a wave and got pulled back. It waited until the wave had receded and then made a dash for dry land, This time it succeeded, the waves only managing to wash away its trail.

A seagull suddenly dropped out of the sky and dived sharply into the sea, hunting for fishes. it came up a few seconds later, its beak empty. Undeterred, it started circling the area, its eyes focused downwards. In its third attempt, the seagull succeeded and the man watched the fish wriggling in its beak, slowly getting gulped down the seagull's throat.

The next time the seagull dived down, it came up with another fish, but this time the fish twisted and turned with all its might, finally managing to break its hold and flopped back into the sea.

He saw all this and noticed that Nature never gave up. The waves, the land, the crab, the seagull, the fish - all ceaselessly trying to achieve what they set out to do. Even if they did not succeed, they knew that if they kept fighting they would get another opportunity, and that was enough. He decided that he would also keep trying. He never liked his job anyway, so it was no big loss. He now had the chance to start all over again and was not going to let go of the chance. He silently thanked Nature, just as Nature had silently taught him a valuable lesson, and walked off with a spring in his step.

The sun finally set, but it set with dignity and a flaming farewell, as if it knew it was going to rise again at dawn and rule over the sky yet again.




This is an exact reproduction of a piece which was written sometime in Class XII. It started out as a random description writing exercise to pass time in a free period (hence the first paragraph) and developed into a proper prose piece. I didn't think too much of it right then, it was just another random piece of fiction I had come up with, and with a moral to boot. However, I found myself coming back to it in the next few weeks, mostly just reading it. I realised that I had written it subconsciously at some level to help me get through a really tough period. I had rarely showed such optimism in any of my stories, especially the ones I had written around the time. And it did give me the strength to go through a pretty hard time. It's not one of my best fiction pieces, the style is more juvenile than what I usually wrote, but it is very important to me and acted as a tremendous support. It also happens to be one of the very few times a written piece of mine got published (school magazine), so in that sense I'm pretty proud of it. I have reproduced it in a blogpost to remind me to always keep my chin up, and also as a promise to myself that I will get back to prose writing in the vacations, something which is long overdue.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Chillin'

There is something cathartic about a terrace jam session under the full moon in the first breezy night in ages. After one has spent four days cooped up in one's hotbox of a room, stepping out only for food.

I know what I missed the most during my project imposed exile.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Of Pachyderm Blessings, Queen's Baths and Relaxing Jam Sessions: Hampi Travelogues Day II

Day II saw us arise later than we had planned, but not by much. I woke up the first and set off on a solo stroll up and down the main (well, only) road of the town with my newest toy - the music player. It's always interesting to see and hear a place come to life; the shops open, the thoroughfare begins to get busy and sundry early morning noises and smells fill the air. The walk gave me some useful 'me time' as well. I also found out that Elton John's 'Circle of Life' is an excellent early morning song.

After my walk was done, I came back and screamed at the other two to wake them up. It freaked poor Abu out, he's not used to such tactics. But it had its effect, so what the hell. We trotted to the river and bathed and then had breakfast in an 'Italian Bakery' which claimed to have Al Capone pizza from the board outside the shop. Whether that is true or not, I did have the best ever Spanish omelette I have ever had there. It beats Gokarna's Namaste Cafe hollow. And the homemade bread was excellent as well. Definitely my best meal of the trip.

Now we were raring to do some sightseeing. We decided to start with the main temple around which the town is built. As far as I could tell, it was the only temple from that era still in use. It is the focal point of the Hampi rath festival which I gathered to be the highlight of the year. It is a pretty big temple and I have always found South Indian medieval architecture interesting as I haven't been exposed to it much in my travels. We took a tour of the temple and noticed a bedecked elephant with a crowd mulling about it. Closer inspection revealed that the elephant was trained to take money from the devotee's hands with its trunk, give it to the mahout, and then bless the devotee by putting its trunk over his head. It was a pretty unique experience for me, but since I have read about how the elephants in India are trained through torture, also a slightly jarring one.

We had to hire an auto to visit the ruins as they were too spread apart. The tour around Hampi ruins took about three hours. There were the customary remains of a kingdom, broken down fortresses, a multitude of temples (most of which had their idols ransacked), the public places etc. The Hampi architecture is pretty beautiful, one could recognise the fusion of Indian and Persian styles within the South Indian sensibilities and this amalgam had created a fairly unique style all for its own. They are also durable. The amount of detail in the carvings and statues still remaining after 600 years is remarkable. The Mughal ruins in North India are pretty eroded and run down in comparison, even though they are from a later era. Goo was highly anticipating the visit to the 'Queen's Bath' ever since he had seen it in the map (naturally), but it turned to be quite a downer; a simple squarish building with a big empty bath and the customary carvings on the wall. I don't know whether Goo actually expected to find women still bathing there but he looked highly disappointed at seeing it.

By the time the tour ended we had been baked by the sun. All the pansies who are complaining about the Bangalore sun should go to the Deccan plateau for a couple of days right now. They'll stop complaining. We decided to go relax at the coolest near place we knew, Mango Tree restaurant and chill there till evening. We borrowed a guitar from a German tourist and Abu played, and Goo and me sang softly, just like our terrace jam sessions (except for the 'softly' part). It was a most relaxing time. The guitar's owner was clearly impressed by Abu's wizardry with it and kept giving furtive glances at his direction. Finally she mustered up the courage to come on over and asked him to teach the chords for 'Brain Damage'. A fairly stoned Abu was quite surprised by this but he took it in his stride and began to teach her. She actually picked it up quickly enough and was playing it decently and it sounded nice.. until she started to sing. Her voice was weirdly awful and monotonous (although I shouldn't be one to talk about godawful voices here). She was good company otherwise though and we also befriended a group of British hippies there. Once you got past the annoying accent, they were quite nice as well.

We came back and did our shopping for the various gifts etc we had to give out. Goo took a long time because he was suddenly gripped with an indecision mania at the wrong time. Then we had an hour or so till sunset before we headed back to Hospet. We decided to go back where we had started the trip, up the rocks where we had seen the sunrise. We found a good spot overlooking the town, recollected the trip, talked about how if some other people were there it would have been so much better, but then again we could have never done so much with a big group, and generally batted the breeze.

And that's how our Hampi trip ended. It was a beautiful experience.