Sanctuary Of Random Keystrokes

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous Deepawali 2008!

Rant etc: The picture was taken 2 years ago at an HDFC branch near my house. I wasn’t around at Bangalore to inspect the decor last year, but it looks like that this year the Diwali decorations are a lot more muted – which is not unnatural; considering what the financial world in general and banks in particular are going through. I for one am trying to be indifferent. If I were to distill my life’s learning (so far) into one sentence, it’d be this – things in this world are rarely as good or bad as they seem!

One comes across a lot of ‘interesting’ things on the internet these days. If email forwards of yesteryears were not enough, you now have Facebook, Twitter and yes, blogs. A lot of it is noise. Granted what is noise and what is not is a highly subjective and personal thing, but we all find ourselves a bit overwhelmed these days – no matter how selective we are about what we consider noise. Here are a few things that stood out from the noise (for me) over the past couple of months:

Subodh Gupta – Is an Indian artist who is going places these days. He creates very peculiar art and steel utensils are an important motif across most of his works. Be it his installations, like “Very Hungry God” – a huge skull made entirely of stainless steel cooking vessels (thereby giving the installation a somewhat literal bend), or his photorealistic paintings of everyday steel utensils.

Photo: Marc Domage, via Saatchi Online

via The Saatchi Gallery

Brooke Waggoner – Most music that is churned out these days has very little shelf life – most songs grow on you within one listening but then their charm begins to wear off. Within a month you begin to wonder how you ever liked that particular track. Gone also are the days when you’d pick an album and like every single track in it.

So I approach the free tracks that iTunes gives away each Tuesday with very little expectation. Yet, when I heard Brooke Waggoner’s ‘Young Friend’ I knew I had stumbled upon something different.

Her music is a fairly unique sounding blend of folk, pop and country and hasn’t lost it’s freshness after a month of repeated listening. But don’t take my word for it. Her site is giving away her first EP free. Get it from brookewaggonermusic.com.

Filminute: The International One-Minute Film Festival showcases one minute long ‘films’. My attention span isn’t quite that bad yet, but it is indeed a very interesting limitation that has led to some very creative ‘films’, including a couple from India. Do check out ‘Rahim Murge Pe Mat Ro’ (don’t if you are the squeamish sorts). Bonus points if you can identify the background track.

Via Gaurav.

Seemed to say these leaves. Taken in late April at Coorg last year. The summer had been hot and the rains had proven to be temperamental. No wonder the plants and the trees were calling out for a little love!

London on a summer day. If you are lucky, a bit of blue will show through the clouds and with some more luck, it’ll continue to be visible for the rest of the day.

In the clear-speckless-blue sky department, Brighton is something else altogether. My 50 mm lens wouldn’t permit me a wide enough view of the pier signboard, so I settled for a pie in the sky.

Although the picture was originally taken in color, I think I knew that it would end up as a toned, black and white. Come to think of it, it goes with the current blog template eh?