Whispering Shadow

Watching movies, chatting with friends, blogging, photography, cleaning, catching up with the newspaper and most of all sleeping (loads), I have done everything I love to do this weekend. I haven't even reached the best part. I got my first salary. Yes, The Illuminator is earning! The weekend was almost reaching its grand end with a cook-out session until my cold and cough also brought fever and a terrible headache along with them. You just can't escape the virus! Anyhow, fever is not something which can over-ride the upbeat mood the pay-cheque has got me in. My friend asked what I was going to do with all that money. "Splurge on shopping? Party? Movie? Gifts? What's the plan? " Frankly I didn't quite know. The only thing I was certain about was that I need to buy my grandfather a new pair of clothes. I didn't know what I will do with the large chunk that remained (now don't start giving me 'you can give it to me if you don't know what to d...

Call me a cribber, but I am not the one who will take mediocrity in my stride. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people love mediocrity. Not that they can't strive for change, but they don't want to do it. Right from college where we are stuck with an ancient education system to sports where we are still proud of being 46th in the points tally of the Olympic games, the sense of complacency is programmed in our genes. Do we not have the spark? We all do, but we let it die. We are not quick enough to light the fire while it lasts. Each one of us has ideas. Each one of us has plans. Who will fear embarassment in case of failure? Isn't it better to remaining at the same position in the ladder than two steps lower? The fear of failure overshadows the reason why one would suport a bright idea, forget coming up with it. Most of the time when there is an opinion poll, say of 10 people, there will be two who agree, two who disagree and the remaining six won't have any...

Around a fortnight ago, each of us was asked in class “Which is that one object you think represents you the best?” People came up with innovative answers like mountain, ice, a moter bike, the Internet, a bridge, the Sun, even ‘ Paani Puri ’ supplementing them with reasons and corollaries. My spontaneous answer was the digital camera. I went home thinking about what I had said. Was it my love for photography? Was it only my obsession with my digital camera? Later while discussing it with a friend, I realized that what seemed like impulse could have had a deeper explanation to it. Besides, there were many valuable lessons I could learn from the digicam . (Reminds me of Blink and 'rapid cognition'!) Firstly, it captures the real picture, as it is, where it is. Being a realist is both a good and bad thing. My friends hate me for being over-logical, not taking pleasure in the imperfections of life. It can be a pain but the truth always hurts. Even more when it is told...

Everyone has a unique way of talking. I love observing how individuals from different parts of the country speak and the verbal etiquette they follow. Recently, in a lecture, while making notes, I was also meticulously paying attention to the facilitator's style of speaking and noting the anomalies down. By the end of it, I had quite an elaborate list of mispronounced words, which some of you might even laugh on if you are fastidious about the spoken word. I am writing a part of it down here, the objective being to see if any of you can correctly guess which part of the country this person was from. hierarchical: high- rar -chick- al quotation: ko - tay -sun section: sex-sun information: in-for-may-suns fatal: phat- tal inflation: in- flaa -sun users: u-sh- ers able: abb - le (like apple) foxpro : fox-fro concentration: cun - sunn - tra -sun null: know-all balance: baa- lansh -e people: pee-pols Hemant : hee - maan -t view: byu - hh segregate : sigrig -gate study: sturr - dy in...

Any normal person would expect the title of the post to be a romantic line in the movie, but if you have seen The Dark Knight you know it isn't, especially when it comes from the Joker (played by Heath Ledger). There are action movies and then there are more action movies. Rarely there is one that manages to grip you with its performances as much as it does with its visual spectacles. Batman’s latest movie is all that and more. Usually, you come out loving the hero but this one makes you admire the villain . You admire him for his notoriety. You admire him for his wit. You admire him for his unpredictability. You admire him for his belief that there are no beliefs, the fact that the only rule is there are no rules. You don’t endorse his point of you but you can’t disagree that he has logic behind it. The whole argument that systems are so tuned to running on set patterns that a slight change can completely break them down is not invalid. In fact he proves it more than o...